THE MYTH OF A PEACEFUL, POT-LEGALIZED WORLD

AMERICAN IDOL judge Randy Jackson, who has patented his own lingo, is
fond of telling contestants that their performance was "dope." I
guess that means he is high on it. Dawg, if you're an aspiring singer
on TV, "dope" is good.

Meanwhile on YouTube this week, the prime minister told his audience
the opposite - that dope is bad. (Stephen Harper is a bit of a
one-hit wonder himself, with his cover last year of a Beatles tune
that ironically celebrates getting high with a little help from your friends.)

"The reason drugs are illegal is because they are bad," Mr. Harper
said in response to an unavoidable question about ending the war on
drugs. "And even if these things were legalized, I can predict with a
lot of confidence that these would never be respectable businesses
run by respectable people."

The whole rationale behind Mr. Harper's first-ever YouTube interview
on Tuesday was to connect with a younger, wired, video-uploading
crowd, and I doubt that's what most of them wanted to hear.

But I also doubt the pot issue is as big as its advocates make it out
to be. While the runaway favourites amongst the 1,800 questions
submitted in this format concerned the legalization of marijuana,
it's a cinch for such lobby groups to game the voting system and push
their agenda to the top.

Now, to the substance of the illegal-substance debate.

I cannot say I followed all the logic in Mr. Harper's meandering
exploration of the subject. But he was right to challenge the
assumption that legalizing marijuana, while taxing the proceeds of
its sale, would enrich the government and disempower organized crime.

I don't buy into the win-win weed scenario either. If pot were
legalized, it would have to be licensed and manufactured in approved
facilities that pay corporate taxes, just like alcohol or tobacco.
That means the product, which would have to adhere to certain
standards, would be more expensive to roll off the assembly line.

At the point of sale, a pack of joints would also be taxed to high
heaven. That's so we can pay for your health care when you're older,
since a joint can be four times more potent in terms of tar intake
than an ordinary cigarette. The government could not justify taxing
tokes less than regular smokes, so your bill will be a doozy when you
buy your first legal doobie.

What will pot users do? Go running back into the arms of their old
suppliers, that's what. In case you forgot, those would be the
violent criminal gangs that were supposed to be put out of business
after pot went legit.

The government will be stuck with more bureaucracy in the form of
inspectors and paper pushers to supervise the legal merchants, which
is expensive for the taxpayer, and it will still be spending just as
much on the law enforcement side to eradicate the illegal pushers.

Now, I know what you're going to say. Drop the outrageous taxes on
pot and tobacco, and the contraband market disappears overnight. But
it's not that simple anymore.

Let's use recent experience as a guide. Contraband cigarettes from
the United States have taken over one-third of the Canadian market,
if not half, in the blink of an eye. As a Chronicle Herald expose
revealed last year, smugglers have undercut the price of a legal
carton of cigarettes by so much that no amount of tax-slashing can
possibly make up the difference.

There are a dozen factories on the American side of the Akwesasne
reserve that are making illegal cigarettes for as little as $2 a
carton. No legal business can compete with that.

I'm willing to wager that the built-in network of grow-ops in this
country could undersell anybody who was above-board. They wouldn't
even lose market share. That's because their customer base is made up
of people who have already rationalized committing a criminal act
when they buy their pot for weekend "recreation."

In my view, there is a stronger argument for decriminalizing the
possession of small amounts of pot for personal use, as the previous
Liberal government had proposed. Slapping users with fines while
dinging dealers with criminal charges is more even-handed, while
keeping a certain level of deterrence.

Pot-smokers act as if they're persecuted and think of their habit as
a right. I think they protest too much. Secretly, a lot of them might
be disappointed if it were officially sanctioned. For isn't the whiff
of illegality part of the allure for otherwise law-abiding citizens?