DON'T LEGALIZE IT

There's something irrepressibly comic about a committee of our house of
sober second thought demanding, along with Peter Tosh, that we "legalize it
- - don't criticize it."

But beyond the jokes about the Senate chamber's smoking lobby, Wednesday's
bombshell proposal to legalize marijuana in this country raises - again -
some serious questions. The Senate special committee spent two years on the
issue, produced a 600-page report and got it exactly wrong.

The Liberal government, in the person of Justice Minister Martin Cauchon,
revealed a more sophisticated understanding of public opinion with its
lukewarm-to-cool comments on the report.

This newspaper has long supported - and still supports - an end to criminal
penalties for possession and an amnesty for the 300,000 or more who have
possession convictions on their record. Possession should be a civil
offence, like double-parking.

This decriminalization is rapidly becoming the conventional wisdom on
marijuana. The idea was generally seen as wildly radical, dangerous and
even depraved when the government's LeDain Commission proposed it in 1973,
but now, most polls show a majority in favour of decriminalization. Times
change, society adjusts to changes and the law eventually catches up.

The senators noted this week that 43 per cent of drug-related criminal
cases are about marijuana possession; decriminalization would solve that
problem at a stroke, making scarce court resources available for other
kinds of cases. And decriminalization would essentially dig the government
out of the hole it has foolishly created for itself over medical marijuana.

But legalization is another matter. "Make no mistake, we are not endorsing
cannabis use for recreational consumption," said Sen. Jean Claude Nolin,
chairman of the Senate committee. But of course they are.

Aside from those who insist that only marijuana eases their cancer pain,
nobody is proposing legalization, or even decriminalization, for the sake
of increasing junk-food sales or to build a new rope-fibre industry;
marijuana is for "recreation" every bit as much as alcohol.

In our society today, what isn't forbidden is accepted, and less and less
is forbidden. In general, this is just fine; free individual choice is what
makes a free society free.

But the price of legal marijuana would be more than just $20 for a pack of
Jamaica Golds, complete with tax stamp, down at the neighbourhood outlet of
the Societe de la Marijuana du Quebec. The social cost would undeniably
include broader use, earlier use and higher consumption per user. Our
society gains nothing by giving this kind of encouragement to this
stupefying drug. Don't legalize it.