ANOTHER GENERATION, ANOTHER SIN FOR US TO CONDEMN AND TAX

President Bill Clinton, you may recall, has admitted he had smoked
marijuana but said he didn't inhale. Olympic snowboard gold medalist Ross
Rebagliati has admitted to inhaling marijuana but says he did not smoke it.
This may strike some as a distinction without a difference.

The president had his first joint while attending Oxford University as a
Rhodes scholar. The Olympic gold medalist had his last one almost a year
ago; he did his inhaling, which produced tracings in his urine, while
partying with friends at Whistler, B.C.

For all this long time, Clinton to Rebagliati, Oxford to Whistler, more and
more people have been smoking pot and governments, the cops, and the
justice system have all been taxed with choking off the supply, running
down the distributors and slapping the wrists of those deemed to be in
possession of the stuff. The result has been a generational cold war of the
young against all authority and an awesome expenditure in futility and
frustration by the elders, trapped halfway between morality, hypocrisy and
memory loss.

It seems altogether likely that long after the politicians, now hiding
under their desks, and all the police have been retired or interred with
their hapless cause, and their exhortations - ``Just say no'' - long lost
on the winds, ``kids'' will still be smoking pot. Perhaps by then, however,
marijuana will no longer be a banned substance and smoking it no longer
even a misdemeanour.

Each generation, it seems, finds its own original sin. For my father's
generation, it was alcohol, a substance banned in the United States by the
18th amendment to the constitution and banned elsewhere by statute and
severe regulation. Drinking booze was not only against the law but, in many
jurisdictions, believed a sin against God. Still, a hell of a lot of people
were drinkers.

As for my own generation, I suppose our original sin was the tobacco weed.
We really did - it seems to me - smoke up a storm, and with the help of
Hollywood and the war, we gave the mantle of manhood, manners and
sophistication to the cigarette. During military training, five minutes of
each hour were given to ``smoke breaks.''

Still, as deadly and costly as smoking tobacco proved to be, politicians
have been unwilling to ban it. They have, instead, restricted its
advertising, tried to prevent it being sold to children and - as, for
example, only last Friday - repeatedly raised the price through taxation.
Meanwhile, those who wish may buy booze and cigarettes and gamble in the
same premises where they buy their groceries. It seems apparent, despite
the toxicity of tobacco, the ravages of alcoholism and the human wreckage
wrought by the video lottery terminals, no responsible authority exists who
believes that either smoking, drinking or gambling should be outlawed. Not,
at least, in our secular world.

Rather than continuing to fight the original sins of past generations,
governments have gone into the business and proceeded to regulate and tax,
and to represent the public interest.

The laws against the growing, sale and possession of marijuana in this
country are, of course, held in contempt by huge numbers of our youth.
Given the opportunity to speak off the record, the political and
enforcement communities largely agree. Still, governments seem more willing
to hassle ``kids,'' exhaust the limited resources of the police and clutter
the justice system in this ongoing war of the generations. All of this over
a drug that is the most benign in the long list of potions many Canadians
consume to alter their states of mind or to encourage a sense of euphoria
or personal well-being, and which are legal and available at every hand.

It is our own cynicism and hypocrisy that inspires the contempt of the law
by the younger generations, just as it maintains their sense of alienation
from the political establishment. You have noticed, of course, the reaction
of the politicians to these Olympian events. They are unanimous in saying
that - well - they're pleased Ross Rebagliati got his medal back. Good for
him, good for Canada, they say.

Contents copyright (c) 1996-1998, The Toronto Star.