CRIMINALS LOVE EASY-CASH MARIJUANA PROHIBITION

Here we go again: Another report warning that organized-crime mobsters are
expanding lucrative marijuana grow operations in Canada.

"The highest level of criminal organizations are involved in this and there are
huge amounts of money being made," RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli said
of the latest Criminal Intelligence Service Canada report.

And this is supposed to be a shock, a burning revelation? I think not.

Of course there is crime and big piles of illegal loot being made on marijuana,
all happening under the government's terminally hopeless policy of prohibition.

It is absurd to think that a popular and relatively benign drug, easy to grow
and apparently used by more than a million Canadians, can be stopped with
real-life replays of the Untouchables.

Police in Canada and the United States are having as much success wiping out
marijuana grow-ops as their forebears did chasing after rum runners and gin
mills during last century's dumb flirtation with booze prohibition.

Sure, they bust the odd grow-op and generate a headline. But with demand high,
a new one springs up the next day.

Canada is one damn big country. Do the police seriously expect us to believe
they can keep a lid on pot-growing over such a vast, sparsely-populated area?

Apparently so, if they only had more money, more officers and courts willing to
throw away the key.

Dream on. The prohibition law is an ass, of highly dubious historical origin
and impossible to effectively enforce.

North America would be much further ahead to legalize, licence, sell and tax
marijuana, as Newfoundland Premier Roger Grimes suggests.

Just as it did with alcohol in the early part of the 20th Century. All it takes
is common sense and political leadership.

But no. From the White House we get the Reefer Madness ravings of American drug
czar John Walters and his grim band of scaremongers. From Ottawa, trembling in
fear under Uncle Sam's big shadow, we get endless variations of the Big Dither.

Canada's marijuana laws are a mess of confusion and contradictions that the
Liberals have failed to address. While Justice Minister Martin Cauchon's plan
to decriminalize small amounts of pot possession are a tiny step in the right
direction, Health Minister Anne McLellan flits and fusses like a gnat on speed.

Her handling of the medical marijuana file is nothing short of catastrophic.
The director of Ottawa's medical marijuana office recently quit and a doctor
quit an advisory panel after funding was stopped for a clinical marijuana trial
in Toronto.

Dr. Greg Robinson described Health Canada's approach as a "Catch 22" --
demanding clinical evidence on pot while at the same time thwarting the
clinical trials needed to produce the evidence.

Nor is McLellan able to arrange a simple way of getting medicinal pot to
patients, lurching about as she is between alienated doctors and puzzled
pharmacists.

Never fear; if we could just get more police to enforce prohibition, all will
be well. And I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy.