MARIJUANA STATE

The Marijuana Market Is Currently Innovative, Competitive, Efficient And
Free. Decriminalizing It Will Make It An Overregulated Government Oligopoly.

Decriminalizing marijuana will mean taking a currently unregulated -- if
illegal -- activity that has developed a sophisticated supply chain and
inexorably bringing it under the ambit of the post-modern administrative
state. Government means, at minimum, taxation. Revenue Canada will scoop
each economic gain, and then some, won by gradually erasing the risk
premium associated with the criminal marijuana industry. Look at the tax
rate on tobacco, alcohol or gasoline.

Once cannabis is just another state-regulated product, government will
insist on being wholesaler, distributor and (except in Alberta and maybe
Quebec) retailer. Manufacture will gravitate to big companies, those with
the best government contacts and expertise at navigating federal
regulation. These could well be the big tobacco companies themselves. Of
course, they still won't be allowed to sponsor major events, like
horseracing or snooker.

Legalization will destroy commercial freedom -- especially that of small
growers and dealers -- and transform the marijuana industry into another
sad Canadian example of overtaxation, overregulation and oligopoly. The
regulatory process will be debauched, soon serving mainly to crush competition.

Grow your own? Forget it. The Cannabis Marketing Board, a Crown agency
stuffed with Liberal appointees and accountable to no one, will regulate
every facet of cultivation, production, processing and marketing. Large
producers using factory farms and wage-earning employees will lobby first
for subsidies, then to eliminate small growers. Weirdos who defy the system
will be busted, clapped in irons, and have their property confiscated. The
mainstream news media will portray them as rednecks, extremists and --
worse -- as selfish men who refuse to accept the benefits of a socialized
industry. This was the actual experience of Prairie grain farmers who
attempted to market the fruits of their labour without submitting to the
Canadian Wheat Board's price-fixing. Similarly, farmers who circumvented
egg and chicken quotas have been treated like, well ... like criminals.

Nor will the consumer escape the nanny state's unsolicited attention.
Reefer potency will be carefully researched by grant-wielding scientists
and prescribed -- read: reduced -- by a large, opaque government agency.
Filters will be encouraged, or mandatory. Your insurance agent will demand
to know if you worship the herb, and if so, your premiums will shoot up.
Health Canada will require graphic warning labels on all packaging. Reports
by tax-funded scientists will "prove" second-hand smoke harms your friends
and loved ones. "Six thousand slain needlessly every year" the Globe and
Mail will warn. Most of it will be junk science, and Terence Corcoran will
protest vigorously, but in vain.

Strangest of all, the ideological left, currently your advocate, will turn
on you. The health Nazis will demonize grower, dealer, user and product.
The moment dope-smoking becomes legal, tax-funded advertising will begin
urging you to quit. "Public service announcements" will hector against
intoxication or even "moderate" use. (Plenty of health nuts insist any
alcohol is bad for you, or that even one ciggy a day will get you cancer.)

The focus of policing will switch from possession and trafficking to
intoxication. Friends will grab your car keys as you try to leave their
party. Do-gooders will organize holiday-season campaigns analogous to
today's "Operation Red Nose." After, say, three transgressions you'll have
to blow into a tube to start your car. Condescending ads will fill the
airwaves depicting stoned (and invariably white male) drivers killing
children, sometimes their own. "M.A.D.D." will branch out, demanding
doped-drivers' names be published in a national registry.

In keeping with this stigmatization, head shops will be government run
(except in Alberta) with unionized staff -- like the old LCBO. A
Czechoslovakia-style ordering system will be devised, using focus groups
aimed at eliciting the most unpleasant possible shopping experience. You'll
check off your choices on a form -- two packs of "B.C. Arrow Lake Home
Grown, Extra Mild" (actually produced, along with 55 other "brands," by a
massive corporation in a former cornfield near Guelph), one roach clip, one
water pipe, and so on. A pie-eyed provincial government worker in drab garb
will take your order and disappear. "Water pipes are on back order; there
was a safety recall," she'll grunt.

As product quality falls and taxes rise, enforcement will ratchet up
without mercy. Just try buying some cheap, full-strength, unfiltered,
just-picked non-Health-Canada-tested weed in Amsterdam, Jamaica or Mexico
and getting it past Canada Customs. The AgCan sniffer bloodhound will be on
you like you had a ripe salami strapped to your thigh.

Freedom to toke? Forget it! Where do you expect it to be allowed? At work?
In bars? In front of buildings? No more indulgent city cops or RCMP
officers cruising past benignly as you toke up behind the bar, in a leafy
corner of the park or against the seawall at the beach. Now, you'll have
bylaw enforcement officers -- those weasel-faced guys who harass
jay-walkers, illegal parkers and leashless-dog-walkers -- pouncing
everywhere. Ticketed nearly to death, you'll yearn for a mere criminal
record. It's back to the garage, bro'.

Under "criminalized" conditions, marijuana is a free -- if black and
crime-ridden -- market. Anyone can join this industry without a university
degree, licence or hearings requiring payments to lawyers, accountants or
engineers. It's innovative. Growers are constantly breeding sweeter
variants and faster-growing plants. It's competitive. As in the computer
industry, consumer prices have fallen. It's efficient. You can get it just
about anywhere, 24-7. It has a high rate of customer satisfaction. It is
not the focus of debilitating product liability litigation. You can do it
in many places if you're discreet. The tax rate is zero. It's cool. The
downside? It's a crime.

Who wants to change this imperfect but highly workable system? Two main
groups. One, the Senate: unelected, unaccountable and filled with
pathologically naive Liberals who worship not the herb, but the state. Two,
our federal Justice Minister. Elected, maybe, but accountable, hardly. The
big picture should be forming for you right about now. "Legal" marijuana?
Buddy, what you been smokin'?