OTTAWA -- While the south-of-40 press hunts for an American woman who
hasn't slept with Bill Clinton, one of those thematic debates is stirring
again like tulip bulbs in spongy gardens: The legalization of marijuana.

About once a year, the toking masses gather their courage and try to
persuade the rest of us that our pot laws are on a par with Salem's
treatment of suspected witches or the Volstead Act: An idea whose time has
come -- and, with any degree of enlightenment, will soon be gone.

After years of funny, semi-persuasive and occasionally abusive e-mails from
suburban outlaws, flower children grown a little droopy around the petals,
and high-flying libertarians, I think I have the arguments pretty well
taped.

The Smoke People say marijuana is a lot less harmful than cigarettes or
alcohol. I call this the Lesser of Evils argument.

It is not without merit. I have never yet been accosted at a party by
someone three tokes to the wind who wanted to see which one of us had a
glass jaw. I have run into several drunken sots morphed into raging bulls
and royal pains by too much booze. So okay. If you don't mind glassy-eyed
stares and the odd non-sequitur over the chip dip, pot is less of a threat
in a socialsetting than several of our official vices.

Big-Ticket Flop

Another point made by the Legalizers is that the war on drugs is pretty
much a big-ticket flop -- something like welfare or regional industrial
expansion. Despite billions spent on drug enforcement, including sending
smugglers to the slammer until their bond issues mature, the hills are
alive with the smell of Mary Jane.

Most times when something doesn't work, we pack it in. So, the Legalizers
argue, why not pack in the War on Drugs and usher in a Peace for Addicts?
If you buy weed at a Marijuana Control Board, no more undercover cops would
get shot in the face. Nor would junkies be abandoned to the mean streets of
their addictions and the heartless manipulation of pushers. Nor would
10-year-olds die in the crossfire of drug turf wars. And so the mantra goes.

The highest merit of the They'll Do It Anyway argument is how those
billions saved from futile policing will be put to work rescuing the
addicted. You know, the way part of the casino take goes to pay for the
treatment of compulsive gamblers.

Legalizers say that there is a better use for all that drug money than
building villas for smugglers. It should be plowed back into the
health-care system. Although a bit perverse, the logical figure-eight of
the Smoke People ends something like this: By legalizing a product we
recognize as pernicious, we actually improve the plight of those consumers
being consumed by their chosen product.

Then there is the Pot Never Did Anything To Me argument. This is basically
unanswerable. Over the years, I have had people tell me that under, or is
that above, the influence, they don't stumble through every day like a
stoned zombie. They are potheads in moderation. They can handle their pot.

Others use the Pot Actually Makes Me Better argument. Much like all those
would-be Jacques Villeneuves who think they handle the 401 better after a
blast or two of tequila. I have even heard from those who claim that pot
makes them better lovers, better drivers, better writers, better putters
and much, much happier dudes, until the elevator that took them up returns
to the ground floor and things look just as ratty as they did before they
struck that match. I do not wish to rain on their smoke-ringed parades.
Perhaps everything they say is true. Perhaps perception is reality.
Perhaps, breaking the law agrees with them. Who knows? But this argument is
like the obverse of the one that says one reefer and you're on your way to
a cold-water heroin flat. A little too extreme to win converts to the A
Toke-a-Day Keeps the Whatever Away school of thought.

Finally, there is the Last Rights argument, the notion that if pot can ease
the pain of the sick and dying, then it ought to be legalized for medical
use. Hence all those pot clubs where the infirm can send what ails them up
in a puff of smoke.

Rosie DiManno of The Star is to be praised for pushing the logic of the
Legalizers to the limit. She recently wrote that all drugs should be
legalized, working on the theory that most of the arguments for legalizing
marijuana work for heroin, cocaine and speed. By across-the-board
legalization, we exchange a massive criminal justice problem for an
enormous health crisis. Of course, both are insoluble.

Social Fatigue

To some, that is a fair exchange. After all, if there was no speed limit,
there would be no more speeding violations, right? To me, it is a
staggering cop-out. Despite all the bobbing and weaving, the driving force
behind legalizing marijuana and other drugs comes down to two things: Deep
social fatigue with the dirty work of standing up to the things that are
killing us -- and the tragically unhip view that drugs are just another
form of good, clean fun. Like booze or cigarettes, except not so bad for
you.

I admit that impairing your wits is big business in these sour and soulless
times. But it pays to remember that there is only one reason people smoke
dope: To feel good without actually doing anything in particular to justify
or sustain that feeling. Dope is a magic potion that temporarily transforms
dumpy lives.

The Blue Jays are back in business, so let me give it to you in baseball
parlance. It is the view that you can win the game on a series of unearned
runs. Just what we need, yes? Another activity that fuels a vapid,
institutional sense of entitlement in an age when individual responsibility
is viewed as a maudlin holdover from the moralizing ages.

But even the people who have tried to give me a stern toking-to over the
years admit that with legalization, there will be more, not fewer, drug
users. And more drug addicts. And child tokers. Is the goal then to create
a society where substance abusers can get an early start and look forward
to a comfortable old age?

In the old days, the Mob ran drugs, booze and gambling. It was then called
organized crime. As we nose toward the millennium, governments have muscled
in on most of the Mob's old territory.

You could call that progress, after a joint or two.

Michael Harris can be e-mailed at mharris@istar.ca or visit his home page.
He is The Sun's national affairs columnist. Letters to the editor should be
sent to editor@sunpub.com.