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'?

John Weissenberger and George Koch are Calgary-based writers.