THE CLASH OVER CANNABIS

With So Many Canadians Smoking and Growing Marijuana, Many People -
Including a Senate Committee -- Are Questioning Why the Federal
Government Is Maintaining Its Prohibition Against the Drug.

Canadians will consume roughly 2,100 kilograms of marijuana today.
This year, three million of us, according to a recent Senate study,
will have smoked, eaten or inhaled almost 770,000 kilograms of the
stuff -- impressive numbers considering marijuana use is a federal
crime.

It is also a crime to cultivate the weed. Yet police and industry
insiders estimate 215,000 growers across Canada produce more than 2.6
million kilograms of cannabis each year. In British Columbia alone,
the pot-growing industry is believed to generate up to $6 billion
annually, making it one of the West Coast's biggest industries, after
forestry and tourism.

With so many Canadians smoking and growing marijuana, questions are
being asked about why the federal government maintains its prohibition
against the drug, and how, if the prohibition is sound public policy,
police can ever be expected to properly enforce the law.

"Why doesn't the government stop dragging its feet and implement a
fully legal regulatory regime for marijuana for everybody?" says Jody
Pressman, a marijuana advocate in Ottawa.

Says Dana Larsen, editor of Vancouver-based Cannabis Culture Magazine,
which sells 85,000 copies every month in Canada and the U.S: "Under a
fully legalized system, people could grow marijuana commercially and
sell it in stores licensed by the government. It could be subject to
health controls, quality controls and taxes. It wouldn't have to be
more expensive than any other fruit or vegetable."

Such views are no longer the sole property of the political fringe.
Two years ago, the Senate's special committee on illegal drugs
interviewed 2,000 witnesses as part of the most exhaustive Canadian
study of marijuana in 30 years. The committee's 2002 report urged the
federal government to end its 81-year-old prohibition by implementing
a system to regulate the production, distribution and consumption of
marijuana -- the same as governments do with alcohol.

"If the aim of (existing) public policy is to diminish consumption and
supply of drugs, specifically cannabis, all signs indicate complete
failure," the report said. "Billions of dollars have been sunk into
enforcement without any great effect."

But the Liberal government is taking another route. It is choosing to
decriminalize small-time pot use and to toughen the law against
commercial growers and dealers.

Legislation introduced in the House of Commons last month would make
the possession of up to 15 grams of marijuana and up to three
marijuana plants no more serious than driving over the speed limit,
punishable by tickets and fines of $100 to $500.

The bill also increases the fines and jail terms for people caught
trafficking or growing larger amounts of pot, in an apparent bid to
deter organized crime groups, whose entry into the industry in recent
years has led to the proliferation of massive commercial grow
operations across the country.

Yet the proposed law isn't making anyone happy. Recreational smokers
predict it will push up the demand and the price of marijuana, making
it a more attractive cash crop for organized crime.

People who use the drug for medicinal reasons complain the government
should be finding ways to ensure them an effective and legal supply
instead of fiddling with changes to the Criminal Code.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving says the bill will mean more
drug-induced traffic accidents, because police have no scientific way
to measure how much marijuana impaired motorists might have been smoking.

Adds Gwendolyn Landolt, vice-president of REAL Women of Canada: "The message
this gives Canadian youth is 'Don't drink and drive, just toke and drive.'"

Police organizations argue that removing their discretionary power to
arrest even small-scale marijuana users and growers will hamper
efforts to fight the wider drug war.

"It's one thing to have 15 grams in your house, but should it be
permissible to have 15 grams on the street, where someone could be
pushing those drugs to kids?" says Kevin McAlpine, chief of the Durham
regional police force and co-chair of the organized crime committee
for the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. "That's the fine
detail we're concerned about."

RCMP Chief Supt. Raf Souccar, director general of the Mounties' drugs
and organized crime section, says U.S. officials have privately told
him they are "extremely upset" by the decriminalization proposals.

As for the Senate, its 2002 report called decriminalization the "worst
case scenario" because it would deprive the government of its ability
to regulate and control a drug that decades of lawmaking have failed
to suppress. Even the bill's legislative summary warns that tougher
marijuana laws could have the opposite effect on organized crime.

"Ironically, one of the possible consequences of heavier penalties may
be to tighten the grip of organized crime on production," the summary
says. "It is doubtful that members of criminal organizations would be
concerned about heavier penalties."

The Senate reported that Canada's courts and police spend up to $500
million annually trying to enforce the marijuana laws, particularly
against the indoor "grow-ops" owned by biker gangs, Asian syndicates
and other organized crime groups.

Police say at least 70 per cent of Canada's 2.6 million kilograms of
cannabis output gets sold in the U.S., much of it smuggled across the
border by crime gangs in exchange for guns, ecstasy and cocaine. It's
the U.S.'s insatiable appetite for marijuana and the easy money it
promises that has lured organized crime into the marijuana business in
recent years.

Marc Emery, an activist who broadcasts Internet-based marijuana
programming out of his Pot-TV offices in Vancouver, says the
traditional cannabis community isn't inherently profit-focused or
prone to violence. He says these are the unwelcome characteristics
organized criminals are bringing to the business.

Police in Ontario have launched a campaign to smoke out gang-operated
grow-ops with a co-ordinated effort from hydro companies, banks,
insurance and real estate firms. All of these unwittingly provide
service to grow-ops in some way, and could help police stop new
marijuana operations from moving into homes and other properties
around the province.

Colin Kenny, the Tory senator who co-chaired the Senate's 2002 drugs
committee, says such enforcement efforts are doomed to failure.
Consider, he says, the parallels between today's expanding problem and
the crime-plagued U.S. prohibition on booze in the 1920s.

"We all know why Al Capone flourished," says Mr. Kenny.

"It's because the government prohibited something the public was
interested in."

Adds Mr. Larsen of Cannabis Culture Magazine: "These big-time grow-ops will
continue to proliferate until marijuana is legalized. The police will keep
busting them, not because they're getting better at it, but because there'll
be more and more."

Biker gangs and Asian crime networks aren't the only people growing
marijuana. It is also cultivated in every province and territory by
people with small and midsize operations, many of them ordinary folks
with legitimate day jobs and families. Mr. Emery estimates Canadian
growers own an average of 4.5 lights each, producing half a kilogram
of pot on average every two months.

Marijuana magazines and the Internet are filled with how-to,
home-growing guides and advice. There are CD-ROMs with pot-growing
garden tips, and online seed banks.

Mr. Emery hawks more than 500 varieties of mail-order seed -- from
"Malawi Gold" to "Afghan Dream" to "Nepalese Grizzly" -- out of the
pages of Cannabis Culture Magazine, which he publishes. He even
markets a brand called "Ben Johnson -- good solid buds and a full,
pungent smoke."

Seed sales, marijuana magazine publishing and increasingly small-time
pot smoking fit into a grey area of the law, in which no one seems
certain of what's illegal and what's not. Cannabis Culture Magazine is
widely sold on newsstands, yet occasionally it is confiscated by police.

One commercial pot grower on the East Coast who identifies himself as
"Jake" is a buttoned-down, 48-year-old owner of a legal manufacturing
business with 15 employees. When he's not running his company, he's
secretly growing outdoor cannabis crops, with the help of a handful of
workers, on dozens of hectares of Crown-owned and private logging land
in the wilds of the Maritimes. He says two-thirds of his income comes
from marijuana sales.

"People would be staggered if they knew how many doctors, dentists,
accountants and even judges smoke pot," says Jake, who vows he'd sell
his legitimate business in a heartbeat, and turn full time to growing
marijuana -- happily paying taxes -- if only the federal government
would legalize the system.

He says legalization and government regulation of the distribution and
consumption networks would force crime gangs out of the marijuana
game, and allow producers like him to cultivate and sell their crops
without skulking around in secrecy.

"It makes no sense to me," he says. "I can legally marry a man in
Canada today, but I can't smoke a joint."

Alan Young, the Toronto law professor who has crusaded for years in
the courts for legal access to marijuana, particularly for medicinal
users, says there are probably more pot smokers in Canada than gay
people, but gays have had more success moving their agenda forward on
issues such as same-sex marriage because the gay movement is
well-organized and well-funded. Until marijuana activists get their
act together, he says, they're unlikely to change the system.

"There are probably a dozen activist marijuana groups in the country,
but they've never been able to work together," says Mr. Young.

Canada's police chiefs are vocal, well-respected and well-organized
opponents of legalizing marijuana.

"We are morally bound to fight this fight," argues Durham regional
police Chief Kevin McAlpine, who also co-chairs the organized crime
committee of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police.

Chief McAlpine says he isn't convinced that cannabis use, although
widespread, is far less a drain on the public health system than the
effects of alcohol or tobacco. The Senate reported in 2002 that the
social and economic costs of cannabis use are "minimal -- no deaths,
few hospitalizations and little loss of productivity."

Not so, says Chief McAlpine. "It's our view that marijuana is not
harmless. As for the legalization issue, I haven't yet heard anybody
telling me how our American friends would react or how we'd stop the
flow of Canadian marijuana across the border. Legalization is just not
a mature debate at this point."

The RCMP's Chief Supt. Souccar says he doesn't know if the marijuana
war can be won, but he's certain it should continue.

"This talk about legalization is very cynical," he says. "What are we
going to legalize next -- break-and-enters, rapes and murders? We
can't give up, we have to fight smarter, and harder."

Cannabis Culture Magazine's Mr. Larsen says that throughout history
Canada has showed the U.S. how to liberalize its society. He predicts
it will do so again with marijuana.

"We led them on ending slavery, we led them on ending the prohibition
on alcohol, and we'll lead them towards ending the prohibition on marijuana.

"I'm sure I'll see it in my lifetime."