BOARDWALK POT PRESCRIPTIONS SHOW IT'S TIME TO LEGALIZE

On my last Los Angeles visit, I strolled the Venice boardwalk for the
first time in years. It had changed.

Seemingly every other storefront was a medical marijuana
establishment, with names like The Kush Doctor, most advertising a
doctor on duty. Paid staff worked the sidewalk drumming up business.

It was clear that had I gone in, there'd be a sympathetic ear for my
"migraine" complaints, I'd get a card from the doctor to take to the
dispensary, lickety spliff.

A similar strip of West Hollywood is featured in Kevin Booth's How
Weed Won The West, part of a double-bill 420 Film Night tonight at
the Revue Cinema, along with his historically minded film American Drug War.

( "420" is longtime slang for smoking pot. It predates Arnold
Schwarzenegger's signing of Senate Bill 420 regulating medical
marijuana use in California.)

It's a warm up event for the 12th annual 200-city Global Marijuana
March on May 1, which in Toronto congregates at Queen's Park. One of
the issues fueling it here is the recent raid on the marijuana
"compassion club" Cannabis As Living Medicine.

My thought on the Venice boardwalk was: this is a joke. When you get
to this point, just legalize it.

Gov. Schwarzenegger (who is famously seen smoking a joint in the
documentary Pumping Iron) thinks so. He has floated legalization as a
way of bringing in $1 billion a year in taxes to a state that is so
broke it's paying government employees in IOUs.

"Bearing in mind that nobody is against really sick people using
marijuana as medicine, in California at least, most people using
dispensaries look like young, healthy kids," says Booth. "I made a
film about people who are trying responsibly to use marijuana, trying
to do what the government wants them to do. Are they really hurting anybody?

"Could you imagine if you had to go buy a $100 doctor card once a
year just to buy a six-pack of beer?"

Clearly, the yes-you-can/no-you-can't bureaucratic crazy-quilt is
insane -- and California is Ground Zero. In the north, in the Emerald
Triangle of Humboldt County, the local economy would collapse if
cultivation were stamped out (the growers have all filled out
ostensibly legal medical-supplier documents, but get busted anyway).
Meanwhile, in the south, San Diego's economy is tied to drug law
enforcement. In the movie, we see a noise complaint against a medical
"grow-op" answered by agents of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency
and the Internal Revenue Service.

Gotta keep those guys working.

For Booth, who was a longtime friend and producer of the late, great
comic/social commentator Bill Hicks, drug laws are personal. Hicks
died of cancer in his 30s, the result, Booth is convinced, of tobacco
and alcohol abuse.

His parents, both fervently anti-drug, were heavy drinkers who died
of alcohol-related illnesses. His mentally ill brother died from
legally prescribed pharmaceuticals.

"In a pretty short space of time, I saw three family members and my
best friend die from legal drugs," Booth says.

"And then the last straw was after 9/11, Bush came out with his new
propaganda campaign, which they launched on Super Bowl Sunday, saying
if you buy marijuana -- which kills nobody -- from some kid on the
street corner, you're supporting terrorism."

That the issue transcends politics is underscored by the
pro-legalization participation of talk-radio host Alex Jones -- a
favourite of Tea Party activists.

Regardless of politics, though, there comes a time when sense should prevail.

The law should not cause more misery than the "problem" it addresses.