LEGALIZING MARIJUANA REFLECTS TODAY'S REALITY

Prohibition is not working and decriminalizing the drug will bring new
problems. There will be adjustment pains, but allowing its manufacture
and use will bring major pluses.

In 1995, the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse researched illicit
drugs and reported: "The current law prohibiting cannabis possession
appears to have had a very limited deterrent effect." So it's fair
to ask, if prohibition hasn't reduced the use of marijuana, what
has it done?

In that year alone, 63,851 Canadians were prosecuted for drug
offences, two-thirds of them marijuana charges. About half were for
simple possession -- somebody had a little bit for personal use. Yet
the government's cost of pursuing these mostly trivial cases was,
figured conservatively, more than $200 million.

The number of marijuana charges is still rising despite reluctance in
many police jurisdictions to do more than confiscate small amounts,
and our laws have made criminals of hundreds of thousands of
Canadians. It has created an underground criminal industry to supply
what even our courts describe as a benign, nearly harmless intoxicant
that has well-documented medicinal properties.

There are two options for amending marijuana law -- decriminalization
of simple possession, or outright legalization. The first is the
popular choice among Canadians and one the federal LeDain Commission
proposed more than a quarter-century ago. It would remove the
penalties for having marijuana but create an institutionalized
oxymoron -- legal to buy, illegal to sell. Anyone familiar with our
prostitution laws -- under which selling sexual acts and paying for
them are legal, but both parties can nevertheless be arrested -- would
advise against more of the same.

So the status quo does not work. Decriminalization will not work. The
unavoidable answer is to legalize marijuana.

It's naive to imagine this can be done without difficulty. But hardly
any of the problems will be new -- they exist now, although under the
table. How will we determine a safe level of blood-THC for driving?
How do we regulate its growing and manufacture? (And how does a
government seemingly determined to kill the tobacco industry give
approval to another smokable plant product?) Who will sell it? Where?
To whom? And, in the world of realpolitik, what will the neighbours
-- the United States -- say if we legalize a drug they are committed
to eradicating?

These problems are real and difficult, but legalization has a couple
of big pluses. First, the potential tax revenue would more than pay
for the administration of legal marijuana (with much left over). And,
most importantly, legalizing marijuana would remove the criminal
element from its production and distribution, by regulating the
industry along the same lines as most other adult vices.

Ontario Justice Marc Rosenberg, in a judgment that struck down the
simple possession law last month, said: "This is a matter for
Parliament." He's right, and the clock is ticking.