CANADA'S REEFER SANITY

SOMETIME in the near future, if a bill in the Canadian Parliament passes as
expected, you won't be arrested any longer in Canada for having a few
joints in your pocket or a few cannabis plants in the basement. You'll pay
a fine and that's it -- no criminal record to explain to a new employer, no
missed mortgage payments while you watch "All My Children" in the prison
lounge with guys named Tiny and Red.

Canada is about to decriminalize marijuana throughout its provinces. Prime
Minister Jean Chretien fully supports the move. Drug arrests, prosecutions
and imprisonments cost his country about $400 million a year -- the
majority for marijuana possession. The United States, by some estimates,
spends $17.5 billion a year policing and prosecuting drug users and dealers.

"It's not only the cost of locking these nonviolent offenders in jail, but
the cost of their lost labor," said Jacob Sullum, author of a new book
titled "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use."

Pot smokers who are behind bars are not out in the workforce supporting
their families or paying taxes. Instead, they're draining tax money to the
tune of about $150 a day in some prisons.

I am not a marijuana imbiber myself but, really, enough already with the
Reefer Madness hysteria that continues to undergird our drug policies. It
flies in the face of 40 years of research. The nonprofit Rand Drug Policy
Research Center is the latest to present findings that disprove the
much-cited theory that marijuana leads to harder drugs.

Yet we spend dwindling public resources locking people up for smoking pot.
Worse, we're spending dwindling resources locking people up for selling
pipes and bongs! In late February, 55 people in 10 states were arrested and
charged in a nationwide crackdown on the sale of drug-related paraphernalia.

"This illegal billion-dollar industry cannot be ignored by law enforcement,
" U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft explained. As terrorism, corporate
fraud and joblessness worry the nation's citizens, Ashcroft rustles up a
posse to raid head shops.

The government's marijuana mania would seem like one long "Saturday Night
Live" skit if people's lives weren't being ruined. The head-shop offensive
followed Ashcroft's prosecution of Oakland's Ed Rosenthal on federal drug
charges for growing and distributing cannabis to cancer and AIDS patients.

Rosenthal's lawyer was barred from telling the jury that his client had
been licensed to sell the drug under California's medical marijuana statute
and a city ordinance. Rosenthal was convicted in January and faces a
minimum sentence of five years in federal prison.

Several jurors said later they never would have convicted Rosenthal had
they known he was acting legally under local law. Now, two U.S.
representatives from California and 30 colleagues are co-sponsoring a bill
called "The Truth in Trials Act." It would allow people arrested for
violating federal marijuana laws to introduce evidence that they were
acting in accordance with state laws. Seven other states have
medical-marijuana laws similar to California's.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican, told the Oakland Tribune this
week he is not likely to support the bill. This surprises no one, given
administration officials' apoplexy over Canada's move to decriminalize
marijuana. They envision bales of pot pouring into Detroit and Buffalo,
providing funds (drug czar John Walters warned) for terrorists. The United
States has threatened that, if the legislation passes, Canadians heading
into the United States should bring paperbacks and provisions. There will
be long delays at border crossings for excruciatingly thorough inspections.

This is not a moral issue. A drug is a chemical compound. It is neither
moral nor immoral. Given what research and experience tells us, how can we
continue to spend so much money, and ruin so many lives, by sending pot
smokers to jail? Instead of trying to impose our irrational drug policies
on Canada, let's instead follow its lead -- and that of 12 of our own
states -- and decriminalize marijuana nationwide.