REEFER BLANDNESS: POT GOES MAINSTREAM

It's Still Not Legal, But Marijuana Has Become 'Respectable'

They could fill the SkyDome eight times over. They range from doctors to
drywallers, lawyers to librarians, bartenders to bookbinders.

To say nothing of poets, priests, politicians, engineers, journalists,
cops, students, snowboarders, stockbrokers and, statistically speaking, a 9
per cent slice of virtually every other strata of southern Ontario society.

They have nothing in common, except this: marijuana.

Many are alarmingly young, naive, sometimes even reckless in their
explorations of the first flower of youth. But a full 30 per cent of
Canada's estimated 2 million recreational tokers are more than 30 years
old, replete with the sense of moderation befitting the marriages,
mortgages, taxes and kids that often accompany later life.

Welcome to the new politics of pot. Once the exclusive domain of
peace-loving hippiedom, marijuana now is so mainstream that even the leader
of the Canadian Alliance can fess up (to what is still a jailable offence)
without fear of electoral backlash. And unlike Bill Clinton, Stockwell Day
admits he inhaled, bless his holy-rolling, Pentecostal soul.

'Back in the '60s, smoking marijuana was an act of rebellion. Today it may
actually be an act of conformity.'

"Nobody buys into counter-culture values by smoking marijuana any more. Now
it's simply seen as a very mild intoxicant that a large number of people
seem to enjoy - one that is not necessarily associated with revolution,
anti-war values or some sort of condemnation of capitalist society.

"It's lost all of that rebellious allure - I think, unfortunately. But
that's what's creating the increased legitimacy of the intoxicant.''

The culture of marijuana has been around for 12,000 years, but the last 70
of them have been marked by a made-in-the-U.S.A. demonization that lingers
still. The Reefer Madness message of insanity and eventual death gave way
in the 1980s to the gateway argument of the Reagan-era's War On Drugs.
Marijuana itself may not be any more harmful than alcohol, it conceded, but
it nevertheless sends youth down the slippery slope toward cocaine and
heroin addiction.

Those gateway fears have all but evaporated through the sheer critical mass
of use without abuse, according to those on the frontlines of the marijuana
movement.

"The movement has been incredibly successful in separating the perceptions
of marijuana from the pantheon of hard drugs,'' says Toronto filmmaker Ron
Mann, whose most recent undertaking, Grass, serves as a scathing and often
hilarious indictment of U.S. efforts to stamp out pot over the past four
generations.

"They've built a firewall between soft and hard, with marijuana being
fairly benign and the other being something the overwhelming majority of
pot smokers want nothing to do with.

"Add to that what's happened in the last 10 years. The industrial hemp
movement being embraced as an environmental alternative for fibre, the
medical marijuana movement taking flight with enormous amounts of research
detailing its effectiveness as a relaxant, a pain reliever, anti-nauseant
and appetite-enhancer.

"All of it, spread over the Internet for all to see, has demystified a lot
of the anti-pot propaganda around the world, to the point where only the
United States, in increasing isolation, continues to take the hard-line
stance.''

Currently, 71 Canadians are allowed to smoke marijuana legally through
medical exemptions granted under Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and
Substances Act.

But that number is bound to increase in the wake of Ottawa's decision not
to challenge the July 31 Ontario Court of Appeal decision that struck down
marijuana laws because they don't allow for medicinal use.

For a reality check on Ontario's modern-day marijuana culture, one need
only stroll into The Friendly Stranger, the new century's answer to those
seedy blacklit emporiums once known as head shops.

The high-end boutique at 241 Queen St. W. is tailored to yuppie
consumption. As pristine as The Gap, the store greets customers with the
latest in hemp fashion, while oak-framed glass counters offer a vast range
of smoking pipes. Throughout the store, information abounds - books,
magazines, brochures.

Owner/manager Robin Ellins, 34, says he launched The Friendly Stranger six
years ago not to get rich, but rather to advance the cause of
decriminalization. But it so happens that he's making money after all,
particularly in the past five months since he moved from a second-floor
location across Queen to his present street-level site.

"My beginnings were in activism and I'm in this as my lifework,'' says
Ellins. "The idea was to work within the system, to disseminate information
and expose how ludicrous the law remains, to do all we could to change
Goliath from the inside.

"But the fact is we've become a success en route. It's just not a closet
issue any more. We have families from the suburbs coming through. There's a
casualness to cannabis culture now that we've never seen before. People
from all walks of life are smoking and it's a simple fact that they really
aren't concerned about the law.''

Ellins' orderly boutique is playing by the rules, as one might expect in
orderly Ontario. At the other end of Canada is the far more aggressive
British Columbia hemp movement, where renegade activist/entrepreneur Marc
Emery sells seed over the Internet in a high-profile campaign to "overgrow
the government.''

Buoyed by the hype of high-octane "B.C. Bud'' and a more relaxed attitude
toward enforcement against growers, British Columbia has drawn media
attention for its burgeoning homegrown industry, with the value of its
marijuana crop, both indoor and outdoor, pegged by RCMP estimates at more
than $1 billion a year. The headlines haven't gone unnoticed by the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency, which has been stepping up its campaign against an
army of southbound smugglers.

Yet Ellins and others are convinced Ontario's marijuana industry is not far
behind B.C.'s in scope and scale.

"B.C. gets the hype, all this talk of 'Vansterdam,' but the bud grown in
Ontario is just as good,'' says Ellins. "Yet it's so much more clandestine
here, because the penalties for growers are, relatively speaking, applied
more severely in Ontario. But who really knows? It's not something
Statistics Canada can keep track of.''

Developments in hybrid seed tailored to shorter growing seasons have been a
boon to Ontario's outdoor weed farmers, police say. But for every patch
dependent on the elements, there's a high-tech indoor garden growing
hydroponically and capable of yielding as many as four harvests a year. The
larger operations rely upon filtration to erase the pungent smell of
ripening, resin-coated marijuana flowers, where pot's psychoactive
ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), resides.

Bombarded under metal halide grow lights, such systems suck up hydro. And
while police won't discuss investigation techniques, many marijuana growers
are convinced their electricity bills are being watched.

A spokesperson for Toronto Hydro acknowledged there have been isolated
incidents of local marijuana growers tapping directly into the power grid
to feed large-scale hydroponic operations. "It's not something we like to
talk about because it's a recipe for electrocution. But yes, there have
been taps, attempts to avoid police detection by avoiding big spikes in
electricity bills.''

It all adds up to one massive headache for police, who are increasingly
frustrated by their unenviable role as enforcers of an ever more blurry
mandate.

"The time we spend, the expense of investigation, the court costs - and in
the end, even large-scale growers get a slap on the wrist because the
crowns don't take it seriously,'' says Toronto police Detective Rick Chase,
a leading authority in the force's drug brigades.

"We know, statistically, that people from all walks of society smoke
marijuana. And the medical marijuana court challenges mean the sands are
shifting under our feet.

"I can't tell you I'm an advocate of decriminalization. But I can say it's
incredibly frustrating to invest these kinds of resources, often with no
punitive results at the end of the day.''

Police aren't particularly interested in small-scale growers with five
plants in the closet. It's the large-scale "grow-ops'' and their links to
organized crime that remain the paramount concern.

Young questions whether organized crime has much interest in pot any more,
when more clandestine riches are to be had elsewhere in the drug world.
"Thirty years ago, the pot grown in Canada was ditchweed, virtually
unsmokable. Everything was imported. Now the RCMP says informally that as
much as 80 per cent of what is consumed in this country is grown
domestically,'' he says.

"Once you eliminate the need for organized crime, it becomes a very quiet
cottage industry, with people from all walks of life growing marijuana to
make a small bit of income on the side and selling it to a very small group
of friends and acquaintances. It's a peaceful trade, a healthier trade, and
we don't have to involve foreign nations.''

At the end of the day, even marijuana's advocates admit that smoke is smoke
is smoke, and won't deny the health concerns inherent in inhaling
carcinogens. And with recent data from the Centre for Addiction and Mental
Health showing pot use among Ontario students up once again at 1970s levels
- - 29.2 per cent of students reporting use in the past year - health
concerns are obvious.

"But let's be rational and approach these health concerns for what they
are,'' argues Young. "What I find horrifying is the cowardice of the Baby
Boom. If the silent minority of very reputable Canadian citizens would
speak publicly on this issue, we might have had a rational change in drug
policy 10 years ago.'' Fully half of the estimated 80,000 drug offences in
Canada this year will be for simple possession of cannabis. Of those
arrested for possession, some 2,000 will be sentenced to jail time,
according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.

"Those who go to jail are basically guilty of geography,'' says Young.
"They got busted in the wrong small town and appeared before the wrong
judge at the wrong time.

"But it's the hundreds of thousands of people who, while they may not go to
jail, are walking around with criminal records, that is so horrible.''