TEAHOUSE AND JOINT AGENDAS

A new "teahouse" opened in Vancouver on Halloween. Like Amsterdam's famous
"coffee shops," beverages aren't the big draw. The Marijuana Users'
Teahouse of Canada connects people permitted to use marijuana for medical
reasons with those allowed to grow it.

The teahouse allows people to consume marijuana on the premises, and
facilitators are permitted to "test" the pot for them. The operators want
to operate strictly within federal law (although they neglected to get a
city business licence.)

However, it's hard to avoid concluding that, although the cannabis plant
has medical and industrial uses, arguments for such uses are also a Trojan
horse. It seems that virtually everybody who advocates marijuana as a
treatment for the sick and hemp as an alternative source of paper and rope
also believes people who smoke it for pleasure shouldn't be branded as
criminals. But they behave as though it's just medicine and commerce that
matter.

Health Minister Allan Rock, who once drove John Lennon around in his VW van
and is familiar with the 1970s stoner band Foghat, grins like an idiot
under his hard hat in Flin Flon's legal underground pot mine, but he's not
fiercely championing decriminalization. Former Grand Forks mayor Brian
Taylor advocates medical marijuana and hemp production, but he plays down
his own recreational intake.

Marijuana does have some legitimate medical uses -- as an anti-nausea drug,
painkiller, appetite stimulant and treatment for glaucoma -- although there
are effective alternatives in many instances. Hemp is a versatile plant --
easily grown and yielding high-quality paper, cloth and oil -- but the
economics of large-scale production are uncertain.

Why are these uses of cannabis oversold? Because most of the people doing
the selling also want marijuana to be legally acceptable as a recreational
drug, but don't think saying so won't get them anywhere.

Curiously, it's Canadian Alliance MP Dr. Keith Martin who has confronted
the issue directly with a private members' bill to decriminalize the drug.
Fellow B.C. MPs John Reynolds and Chuck Cadman also support decriminalizing
possession of small amounts for personal use.

Britain is moving forward with a government-sponsored bill to decriminalize
marijuana possession. Jurisdictions from Holland to South Australia -- even
some U.S. states -- have already done it. The LeDain Commission recommended
that Canada do it in 1971. Why don't we?

Arresting people for marijuana possession wastes police time. Prosecutions
cost a lot. And given that the laws against marijuana possession rarely
lead to convictions, the laws have become arbitrary and have a real
potential for abuse.

We need a free vote in the House of Commons on this issue. The alternative
is to continue to criminalize a widespread social activity, and that
encourages contempt for the law.