GO SLOW ON MARIJUANA CHANGE

The Senate committee report on marijuana opens with a declaration that
because senators don't face the electorate, they can afford to be
objective. This "objectivity", presumably, is what led them to conclude
that Canada should be a world trend-setter in fully legalizing marijuana.

Maybe being a senator does allow objectivity. The other side of that
particular coin, however, is that unelected senators don't have to face
real-world situations when they write their reports.

This particular committee, headed by Senators Claude Nolin and Colin Kenny,
has declared the international drug conventions to which Canada is a
signatory to be "an utterly irrational restraint" as far as they apply to
marijuana.

In order to legalize cannabis, it concludes: "Internationally, Canada will
either have to temporarily withdraw from the conventions and treaties, or
accept that it will be in temporary contravention until the international
community accedes to its request."

Easy to say, hard to do.

The fact is, legalizing marijuana would be a big messy business, one
involving abrogation of international conventions, deep unhappiness of our
American neighbours, and a lot of controversy at home.

The Senate report contains a lot of interesting and useful information. It
makes the very good point that smoking marijuana does not appear to lead
inevitably to addiction, or to use of harder drugs. The drug's health
effects, while still not entirely determined, appear no worse than abuse of
other, legal substances.

Some reform of current law, in which some 20,000 Canadians a year are
arrested for mere possession of cannabis, at a cost to the legal system of
hundreds of millions of dollars, seems indicated.

What isn't indicated is a giant leap from our current prohibition to a
wide-open production and sale of the stuff by anyone who gets a federal
licence. There is no public thirst for such a dramatic change, and, without
a lot more research and study and consultation, it would be foolhardy.

It's certainly true that current laws haven't stopped a booming marijuana
cultivation business in British Columbia and Quebec, and growing
experimentation with the drug by Canada's teens. Yet availability and
social tolerance are two of the factors governing how much a drug is used;
legalizing marijuana will dramatically increase both those factors, so we
should assume it may dramatically increase marijuana smoking as well.

It makes sense to go at this thing one step at a time. Health Minister Anne
McLellan is currently wrestling with the matter of medical marijuana,
trying to get some government-grown cannabis that can be used in clinical
trials. That's step one.

At the same time, Justice Minister Martin Cauchon seems keen on the idea of
"decriminalizing" the possession of marijuana, so that users aren't stuck
with a criminal conviction. That in itself would be a very big step, one
that must be done only with careful study of all its ramifications.

For instance, what would the government do about those Canadians who
currently have a criminal record for marijuana possession? Will it expunge
those records, or not?

Cauchon seems to see decriminalization as a first step toward even more
liberal marijuana laws. He would be wise not to push that thought too
quickly. Let's first think carefully about how decriminalization will work,
before moving on to bigger ideas.

Smoking marijuana may not be the evil we once thought it to be, but it's
not something we want to promote, either. It makes sense to move toward
liberalization slowly.