LASQUETI EXPERIENCE PROVES B.C. GONE TO POT

In this case, the police deserve as much sympathy as residents of the
island.

Maybe you have to be stoned to visualize it, but on a map, Lasqueti Island
vaguely resembles a roach -- and by "roach" I am not speaking in the
entomological sense. Similarly, its larger next-door neighbour, Texada
Island, resembles a full-blown spliff. (Note: A "spliff" is generally
regarded as a large doobie. A "doobie" is . . . oh, who are we kidding? You
know what a doobie is.)

I don't know much about the place, never having been there, but
Lasqueti Island is remembered fondly in my wife's family mythology.
They would summer there in the 1960s and 70s, and back then, Lasqueti
epitomized that West Coast way of life peculiar to its time -- a
tolerant, benignly hedonistic refuge. In an accounting of the place by
my wife's Aunt Joy, there existed a commune of hippies (many of them
American), a few fishermen, a few retirees, a few loggers, the odd
draft dodger, a resident population of welfare bums (a category that
probably overlapped upon most of the above-mentioned groups), and some
cattle and sheep, half of them wild.

There was also, Joy recalls, a lot of marijuana there. Way back then
it could be seen growing in many places, she said, though oddly no one
laid claim to it. I guess it was just self-seeding, huh?

Now, 45 years later, according to RCMP, there is this recent startling
development on Lasqueti to report:

There is a lot of marijuana there.

This revelation came to light last week in an RCMP media advisory.
Usually, RCMP media advisories are as dry as dust, but in this one,
one sentence leapt off the page. Pot was so common on the island that
residents, it stated, "admit to using marijuana as a currency
commodity instead of cash to conduct business transactions." The
advisory also suggested that since the amounts being grown were so
large that it was enough to keep each resident of Lasqueti stoned
until the next Ice Age, much of it was being exported off-island. That
smell wafting in from Lasqueti, the RCMP charged, was the stink of
organized crime.

The Lasqueti Islanders, in reaction, seemed to be as outraged at this
charge as they were entertained.

"Organized crime?" one Islander was quoted as scoffing in a Province
story. "I'd say disorganized crime, maybe."

Whatever. Who knows about these things? But the Islanders were livid,
and they were tired of the heavy-handed way the force had been
conducting its annual raids, with RCMP and military helicopters
buzzing overhead. They demanded a meeting.

The force dispatched a three-man flak-catching contingent headed up by
Staff-Sgt. Bill Van Otterloo. On the phone, Van Otterloo sounds like a
genuinely nice guy, a 35-year veteran who knows what's what, and who,
despite the grind of his job, can't quite keep the humour out of his
voice. I got the impression that he was aware of the ironies at hand.

"There are about 350 permanent residents on Lasqueti," Van Otterloo
said, "and about 150 attended the meeting. Of those, there were a
total number of speakers of about 30. Of those, some of them wanted to
debate the legalization of marijuana."

"But," Van Otterloo sighed, as if he were throwing his hands up at a
loss, "I'm not in the business of debating government policy. We don't
make the laws. We just enforce them."

Van Otterloo did not want to get into a debate with me over the
legalization of marijuana, either, and it was unfair of me to try to
engage him in one. But he did say that he remembers years ago that
society underwent a debate on how to reduce the number of highway
deaths due to alcohol. Society grew increasingly intolerant of
drinking and driving, and the force cracked down. That same debate
over marijuana may transpire, Van Otterloo suggested, as society's
tolerance or intolerance of marijuana shifts. In the meantime, he's
just a guy doing his job.

The way he will do that job will likely change, at least on Lasqueti
Island. The Islanders got an apology from the RCMP, and the annual
practice of hunting by helicopter, Van Otterloo said, would "be looked
into." His concern now, he said, was to "rebuild the bridges" to the
community.

Oddly, cast as they are as the ham-fisted zealots in this case, I find
myself sympathizing with the cops. Even though they are, as Van
Otterloo said, just doing their jobs, more and more of them must be
increasingly wondering just what their job is.

Here we are, 45 years since Aunt Joy first glimpsed pot growing on the
island, and despite the annual helicopter flyovers and exorbitant
costs devoted to eradicating it, there may be more pot on Lasqueti
Island, not less.

Here, too, in the big city the stuff is more ubiquitous than ever, and
if you don't believe me, ask any high school student. This may be a
case where policing is creating the "problem" (as the police see it)
rather than containing it. By keeping its street cost inflated by
trying to restrict its supply, we've created that much more incentive
for suppliers to grow it.

B.C. has gone to pot -- and maybe not despite the law, but because of
it.