POT LEGALIZATION CASE REHASHES FAMILIAR GROUND

It was unsettling on a personal level to be in court listening to pleas for
amnesty on charges of marijuana possession.

Last time that happened, I was the accused.

The Supreme Court of Canada is being asked to grant all dope smokers
permanent relief from criminal prosecution.

Almost 30 years ago, in the Whitby District Court, I was pleading for much
the same thing, albeit purely out of self-interest.

The cops nabbed me in a car outside my high school holding a small bag of
pot which, I swear, belonged to the driver, who didn't garner us any police
sympathy by hitting the accelerator and dragging two detectives 100 metres
down the street before talk of guns being drawn squealed him to a full stop.

My father hired one of Toronto's top criminal lawyers to ensure his
troublesome teenager would be spared a career-limiting criminal record from
a simple possession charge.

The judge looked down at my lawyer, who had recently gained media fame
defending a double axe murderer, checked the docket on his desk and peered
over his glasses.

"You're aware, sir, this is a possession charge?"

Well, the whole thing lasted 15 minutes.

It was an open and shut case, a bust ironically coming the day AFTER my
18th birthday, which should've found me drinking to my age of majority in a
bar instead of smoking up in a car.

The strategy of hiring high-priced talent quickly backfired.

The judge viewed the case as a silver-spooned kid -- hardly -- trying to
buy himself a scot-free sentence.

He dismissed the case saying he didn't give discharges to anyone,
registered the guilty verdict and called on the next pot-sized criminal to
step forward for immediate conviction.

That would never do, figured my ego-bruised lawyer.

He appealed the judge's decision and found a merciful alternative to grant
me a conditional discharge.

It cost my father thousands of inflation-adjusted dollars and I promptly
forgot to apply for a pardon, which is required to permanently erase the
record.

Which bring us to the Supreme Court this week where the nation's, um,
highest legal minds are finally studying the right question at the worst
possible time, a push for court-ordered legalization just weeks before a
decriminalization bill is scheduled for introduction in Parliament.

In a startling bout of deja vu, the court's pot proponents were still using
the LeDain Commission findings to back their case, the same 1970 federal
report recommending the removal of marijuana possession as a crime my
lawyer used in 1974.

Finding it incredulous the former law school dean's report was still the
definitive dope on decriminalization, I interrupted Gerald LeDain's
peaceful retirement in Ottawa to chat.

After identifying myself, LeDain hung up the phone.

I called back to assure him I wasn't flogging newspaper subscriptions, just
seeking his updated views on the pot legalization question.

He hung up again.

You can't really blame him for being cranky.

The guy's been the godfather of legal grass for more than three decades.

It's time for another credible voice to carry on the crusade.

And they sure weren't in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The Justice Department lawyer opposing legalization acted suitably dour,
moralizing on the detrimental health consequences and detection
difficulties linked to cannabis, an odd line of attack for a department
aiming to decriminalize a supposedly benign narcotic this year.

But he delivered a more coherent view than the colourful pot activist
defence team -- one who was dressed in hemp and admittedly abuzz on hash.

Most of their legal positions left the justices unimpressed and
argumentative as they poked numerous holes in the submissions.

Still, it was the same old rehash all 'round.

Casual use can lead to chronic use in some cases, the government argued, as
if there's any other route to take.

Cannabis causes no harm to the person and defies the "rationality" and
"reasonableness" litmus tests for constitutional law, insisted the other.

Seemingly disconnected from the evidence was anyone pointing out the lunacy
of starting a legal challenge now when the Senate, a House of Commons
committee, the justice minister, the prime minister and the next prime
minister all agree decriminalization is overdue and imminent.

While the high court and politicians potato-toss legal responsibility, the
practical reasons to act quickly to end reefer madness are overshadowed.

It's about restoring the focus of law enforcement, which can't even keep
track of growing operations, according to a new RCMP report, on hard drugs
and hard crime.

It's about ending a persecution which creates criminals out of young,
mostly law-abiding citizens at a rate of five convictions per hour.

And at the risk of taking it personally, it's about getting rid of my
grass-stained record. But that's just about me -- and 600,000 other Canadians.