CHIEF PANS LEGAL POT

Top Cop Slams Marijuana Plea

A former Vancouver mayor's call to legalize marijuana had Calgary's
top cop on the defensive yesterday, with police Chief Jack Beaton
saying he'll never accept pot as harmless.

Beaton, who attended Philip Owen's speech calling for the regulated
sale of marijuana and an end to the war on drugs, said his own
experience shows pot is a serious problem -- and Calgary will never
surrender in the fight against narcotics.

"He says to give up on the war on drugs because we're not winning it,
well what about the war on child pornography -- we're not winning that
either," said Beaton.

"We will not give up the war on drugs, never."

Owen, who served as Vancouver's mayor from 1993 to 2002 and is
responsible for many of that city's liberal drug treatment policies,
was in Calgary as a keynote speaker at the Safe Streets Safe Cities
Conference, which ends today.

Beaton said he appreciates the public debate, but doesn't support
Owen's advocacy of safe-injection centres for intravenous drugs, or
the ex-mayor's belief marijuana is a harmless drug, unconnected to
hard narcotics.

"I talk to kids and adults in adolescent recovery centres, and they'll
tell you, marijuana was a gateway drug for them, so when he talks
about soft versus hard, I don't see that," said Beaton. "They're all
drugs and they lead you to a life of destruction and despair."

Owen told the packed conference on community safety that Canada needs
to take the marijuana industry out of the hands of criminals and
regulate it -- otherwise, it maintains the same gangster-run system
that prevailed during alcohol prohibition.

"A regulated market is the way we have to move and something we have
to get serious about," said Owen.

"There isn't an illegal narcotic in the world that will be made safer
in the hands of organized crime."

Instead of a war on drugs, Owen spoke of a four-pillared approach that
focuses as much on treatment and harm reduction as enforcement and
prevention.