POT'S CRITICS RUN OUT OF EXCUSES

Last week in Hartford, the Connecticut House of Representatives passed
Bill 1014, An act concerning the penalty for certain non-violent drug
offenses. Assuming Governor Dan Malloy signs off, Connecticut will
become the 14th American state to decriminalize marijuana. For a first
offence, at least, getting caught with a half-ounce of pot will be no
more life-altering than getting caught speeding. The bill passed
90-57, with 11 Republicans voting yes. It'd be nice to think some
Canadian Conservative MPs were paying attention.

Not so long ago, Canada was going the same way. Two Liberal
governments -one majority, one minority -tabled very similar
legislation. And that made us super-cool. Got us on the cover of The
Economist, it did, and cheesed off Uncle Sam to boot. When American
ambassador Paul Cellucci warned of massive border delays, prime
minister Paul Martin portentously replied that "Canada will make its
own laws, pure and simple."

Or, it won't. The first bill was prorogued to death; the second
expired concurrently with Mr. Martin's lease at 24 Sussex Drive. Now
the Conservatives plan a crackdown, with mandatory minimum sentences
for small-scale pot growers. And unlike the Liberals, it seems they'll
follow through. It's unnecessary, and not very conservative at all.

The American government has always been the arch-villain in this
policy debate, and the threat of bilateral tension is indeed real. But
Washington's argument cupboard is getting awfully bare. The National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws considers a jurisdiction
to have decriminalized marijuana when it imposes "no prison time or
criminal record for first-time possession of a small amount for
personal consumption." All told, 41% of the U.S. land mass is a
decriminalized zone, and 35% of Americans live under those laws.

It's particularly worth noting that this includes five border states
comprising 5,289 kilometres, or 60%, of the CanadaU.S. frontier.
Washington might well still raise a fuss if Canada considered
decriminalization, but it would look idiotic in doing so. Such
hypocrisy would be a wretched excuse not to pursue our own best interests.

Having said all that, I'm no fan of decriminalization, except as
compared to the status quo. If the impetus for reform is the futility
of prosecution, which is in turn informed by the general acceptance
that marijuana isn't dangerous enough to worry about, then
decriminalization is a non-sequitur response. Legalization, and
optionally regulation and taxation, would be far more logical, not to
mention lucrative. A 2005 study by Harvard University economist
Jeffrey Miron estimated U.S. governments would save $7.7-billion a
year by abandoning marijuana prohibition, and gain $6.2-billion from
taxing it at similar rates to tobacco and alcohol.

But there's a financial incentive to decriminalization, too. The
Connecticut Office of Fiscal Analysis estimates the state will save
$885,000 in law-enforcement resources by decriminalizing marijuana,
but also add $1.4-million to its general revenues -because it "will
greatly increase the frequency with which fines are imposed and collected."

This is something conservatives and cannabis paranoiacs never even
seem to consider: The smart money has decriminalization leading to
more enforcement of anti-marijuana laws, not less. Currently, cops
often hesitate to bust people for possession because the punishment is
either too lenient to bother or potentially too harsh to risk,
depending on the situation. But if they could just write people a
ticket that had built-in penalties for nonpayment, why wouldn't they?

In fact, this may be a big part of why Canada got as close to
decriminalizing marijuana as it did. In 2004, an Access to Information
request led my colleague Dan Gardner to a draft Justice Department
submission to Cabinet that listed increased enforcement as an
"advantage." Certainly, there would be every incentive for police to
crack down, and for politicians to encourage them to do so, and no
incentive for either group to back off.

More revenue. More enforcement. And the potheads will think they won.
There's nothing for prohibitionists to dislike there, surely. The only
risk for them, I suppose, is that once it became clear liberalization
hadn't led to more marijuana use, governments would be hugely tempted
to cash in on the legalization, regulation and taxation bonanza. That
wouldn't be my preferred outcome, either. Private, otherwise
law-abiding citizens grow it now -why can't they grow it forever? But
anything's better than the stupid mess we have now. What a pity it's
about to get stupider.