TOLERANCE FOR LEGAL POT HIGHER

Marijuana: the Growing Debate

In the first of four stories, The Gazette, Global Television and Canada.com
examine the place of marijuana in Canadian society. Companion reports by
Global will air on the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news today. The second story will
appear next Thursday.

As many Montrealers favour the legalization of marijuana as do those who
want to keep simple possession of the drug prohibited, a new survey shows.

The poll, conducted for The Gazette and Global TV by SOM Recherches et
Sondages, also revealed differences between the views of francophones and
anglophones when it comes to their attitudes toward cannabis.

Over all, 54.2 per cent of Montrealers feel laws governing marijuana should
be relaxed. Among francophones, the figure is 61.7 per cent; that
proportion falls to 45.4 per cent among anglophones.

Perhaps most surprising was the finding that 33.5 per cent of respondents
favour legalization, whereas 29.7 per cent prefer decriminalization and
32.4 per cent opt for prohibition of the drug.

The poll was commissioned after the release of last month's Senate report
on marijuana, which recommended legalizing the drug.

It surveyed 603 people on the island of Montreal between Oct. 10-17. It is
considered accurate to within 4.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

It's late afternoon out here on the leading edge of public opinion.

Former punk-rock bassist turned pot activist Marc-Boris St. Maurice sits on
a plush couch at the back of a busy St. Denis St. coffee shop.

It's a cozy setting but he'd rather be elsewhere, namely the windowless
confines of Montreal's Palais de Justice.

"To be frank, I'm not afraid of going to court, I'd rather we just got on
with it. I'm confident we'll win," said St. Maurice, founder of the Bloc
Pot and the federal Marijuana Party.

St. Maurice and his co-accused, Alexandre Neron, have been waiting four
months for a Quebec Court judge to rule on whether the trafficking charges
they face for allegedly selling pot through the Club Compassion de Montreal
violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

That St. Maurice can even contemplate victory in this battle says a lot
about society's changing attitude toward marijuana.

Montrealers might just be at the forefront of more liberal attitudes toward
marijuana. This city has gained a reputation for tolerance of personal
vice, and the data suggest public opinion here is on side with St. Maurice
and the legalizers.

A Gazette/Global TV poll conducted by SOM Recherches et Sondages says a
majority of Montrealers favours less stringent marijuana laws.

Four out of 10 people surveyed admit they've smoked marijuana; that figure
soars to nearly seven out of 10 among teenagers.

"Quebecers like their sins, that's no surprise," shrugged St. Maurice.

Canadians' feelings over cannabis have vacillated considerably in the last
two decades, but the poll suggests Montrealers' attitudes are more
entrenched. Of those surveyed, 68.1 per cent say their opinions haven't
changed in the last 10 years. Some 20.7 per cent say they're more tolerant
now than they were, 8.8 per cent say they're less supportive of liberal pot
laws than before.

In recent months, pot has been put back on the front burner.

Last month, a committee report from the staid old Senate - which doesn't
exactly have a reputation as a bastion of liberal activism - even
recommended outright legalization.

The federal government has said it will move early next year to relax
possession laws.

Senator Pierre-Claude Nolin, chairman of the Upper Chamber's committee on
marijuana, says the policy-makers and politicians are lagging behind the
public's wishes. According to Nolin, federal polls point at similar
conclusions to The Gazette's.

"The population moves more rapidly than the politicians. We're just now
catching up ... now that the government sees the public opinion is solid,
it's moving," Nolin said.

A 2001 study by the Fraser Institute, a conservative Vancouver-based
think-tank, released a poll that documented the shift in public perceptions
since the 1980s, when the war against drugs reached a fever pitch in the U.S.

The surveys also demonstrated that Canadian opinion tends to waver between
prohibition and liberalization, although the trend toward a more permissive
attitude has solidified since the mid-1990s.

In 1984, a majority of Canadians felt marijuana possession should be
decriminalized. By 1987, barely 40 per cent supported more lenient laws.

After supporting harsher policies concerning simple possession - at one
point it was illegal to distribute material advocating cannabis consumption
- - a majority of Canadians wants to strike small-time possession from the
Criminal Code.

So why are we becoming more permissive?

Serge Brochu, head of the Universite de Montreal's criminology department,
puts forth a pair of explanations.

"The media probably had an effect in all of this. The more you see in the
newspapers and on television about what's going on in other countries, the
more you realize there's more than just the U.S.-style war on drugs."

Brochu also said that experience has shown that treating drug use as a
penal matter has done little to curb access to marijuana and that more and
more people are recognizing substance abuse as a public-health issue.

Dr. Raju Hajela, past president of the Canadian Society of Addiction
Medicine, thinks the growing sentiment of laissez-faire is born of popular
ignorance and dangerous propagandizing on the part of legalization advocacy.

Hajela is at the forefront of a movement within the medical community to
oppose more permissive marijuana legislation.

Hajela gained national attention for claiming that smoking one marijuana
joint is the equivalent of 10 tobacco cigarettes.

"Societal attitudes are molded according to misinformation. The facts are
being coloured by an organized lobby," said Hajela. "Marijuana isn't like
alcohol, whose effects are known and predictable ... a teenager's brain
isn't mature enough to deal with alcohol, let alone psychoactives."

Hajela isn't on a crusade against marijuana alone. He doesn't think tobacco
should be freely available either. Hajela says it's imprudent to formulate
policy on cannabis until more is known about it.

"If you can show me credible scientific evidence, then I'm absolutely
prepared to be wrong (about cannabis). Until then, we shouldn't make
dangerous substances available to the public," he said.

The Canadian Police Association says moral disapproval over drug use is
diminishing, and points to an increasingly powerful pro-pot lobby that it
says has created a public perception that the substance is benign.

At a press conference during the Senate hearings, CPA executive director
David Griffin said, "Canada must resist the seductive temptations being
advanced by a sophisticated drug lobby."

"The police refer to a 'highly organized lobby,' which is kind of
flattering actually," St. Maurice said. " I don't think it's that well
organized at all. And as for propaganda, all the word means is propagating
information. So yeah, we're propagandists," he said.

There's plenty of pro-cannabis literature on the Internet, available to Web
surfers everywhere. The Google search engine will return about 1.3 million
Web pages. "It's probably one of the first things to ever go on the Net.
Right after porn," said St. Maurice.

Marc-Boris St. Maurice belies the stereotype of the unkempt, tie-dyed pothead.

The nose ring he occasionally wears is vaguely flamboyant, but the
32-year-old cuts an unassuming figure; just a guy in jeans and sneakers
whos e cell phone and Palm Pilot are seldom out of reach.

St. Maurice was prosecuted for allegedly selling 66 grams of pot to an
undercover police officer in the Club Compassion de Montreal two years ago.
The club, which suspended operations this month, distributed marijuana to
medical patients who had federal licenses or who had been referred by a doctor.

St. Maurice isn't angry about being busted; he sees it as the cost of
militancy.

"I'm mostly disappointed. I just think it's sad the government's not more
pro-active on this issue," said St. Maurice, who said he's been charged
"five or six times" with various marijuana-related offences.

He hoped the trial would wrap up this week, but the court calendar couldn't
accommodate his case. St. Maurice and Neron will have to wait until Dec. 3
to find out if the courts share their opinion.