BLAME CANADA FOR OUR PRISONER OF POT

The forces of anti-Americanism are in full throat after the arrest of
B.C. Marijuana Party leader Marc Emery to stand trial in Seattle for
selling seeds by mail-order.

The hard left in Kamloops (yes, there is one) sees the sinister hand
of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at work. In a letter to Kamloops
This Week, Gary Williams muses that Canadian Gen. Rick Hillier's
recent Donald Rumsfeld-style talk about whacking terrorists may be
part of a pattern with this sudden crackdown on pot. He writes,
"Indeed, I have to seriously wonder if Hillier, Defence Minister Bill
Graham and the RCMP are now taking their directions from
Washington."

At the North Shore Outlook, columnist Denny Boyd recalls the days when
Tommy Chong lived on Marine Drive, and reminds us that the one-time
member of the stoner comedy duo Cheech and Chong was recently busted
in a U.S. crackdown on pot paraphernalia. Chong's crime? Selling
custom bongs from a website. His punishment? Nine months in jail, a
$20,000 fine and forfeiture of $120,000 worth of assets. Boyd hopes
the pot tunnel across the border at Aldergrove is well bricked up, to
keep the Yanks from using it as a beachhead for invasion.

Even the staid Victoria News suggests in an editorial that the
Canadian courts should refuse to extradite Emery to stand trial. This
is highly unlikely, given the clear coordination between U.S.
authorities and ours in the raid on Emery's Vancouver seed emporium,
and his arrest in Halifax. Extradition treaties are not to be tossed
away like tissues by any country that aspires to be a serious
international player.

The Vernon Morning Star gets it right, saying it's up to Canada to say
what it really means on pot. That's putting it mildly. The federal
Liberals have made fools of themselves, posturing again and again
about decriminalization (and lots of other legislative initiatives),
only to let it die on the order paper for another self-serving snap
election.

The law against selling seeds in Canada may not have been enforced for
30 years, but it's still the law. Some places still take that
seriously, but not southwestern B.C., where informal prosecution rules
cause police to turn a blind eye to all but the biggest pot crimes.
Emery was jailed in Saskatchewan for passing a joint. In Saskatoon
they call that "trafficking." On the steps of the Vancouver Art
Gallery, they call it "Saturday."

I've met young people who think pot is already legal here. What are
they to conclude when they turn on one of those new youth-oriented
shows on CBC Newsworld, such as last year's "Play Goes to Pot." If you
missed this "news" program, it featured host Jian Gomeshi sporting a
custom t-shirt and microphone decorated with a pot leaf. A highlight
was a marijuana tasting panel hosted by Emery, with a group on a couch
blasting each other with "supertokes" from plastic bags, descending
into giggling fools as they over-indulged. It was the dope equivalent
of guzzling Jack Daniel's out of the bottle, Keith Richards-style.
Your tax dollars at work, folks.

Seriously, we need to grow up as a country. Right now we can't
legalize marijuana without violating international treaties signed by
us and the U.S. If we're going to decriminalize simple possession of
small amounts, we should get on with it, although personally I don't
see how it's going to do much for the problems of dangerous grow
houses and organized crime. For now, Canada is a country that pretends
to defend itself, pretends to be generous to the Third World, pretends
to be a peacekeeper and pretends to legalize pot.

Coleman v. Campbell

Two beefy ex-cops have been influential in the pot issue in B.C., Rich
Coleman and Larry Campbell.

Senator-designate Campbell figures we should legalize marijuana
outright, and "tax the hell out of it." This would enable federal
funding for more of his beloved shoot-up sites, part of the one-pillar
drug strategy that he's overseen on the downtown east side. The good
news for the rest of the province is, as long as Vancouver postures as
the super-progressive European junkie paradise, it will continue to be
a magnet for hardcore addicts from all over B.C.

Coleman, who has moved on to the forest ministry, took the more
conventional line as solicitor general. He was adamant that
industrial-scale grow operations, financed by international organized
crime, are being shrugged off by liberal judges who hand out
nuisance-level sentences.

Unless and until the federal government actually does something,
Coleman is right. The guys with hockey bags full of B.C. bud, guarded
by assault rifles, should be a priority.

Governors-general in waiting?

Now that the CBC has become vertically integrated with Rideau Hall,
Jian Gomeshi is probably a strong contender for Governor-General some
time in the future. Hosting a pot-promoting show on CBC Newsworld will
probably help him, just as being separatist-friendly seems to have
helped the latest recruit, CBC presenter Michaelle Jean.

My long-shot pick for the next CBC presenter-turned vice-regal
appointee is George Stroumboulopoulos, the former Kelowna rock radio
deejay and MuchMusic veejay who now hosts CBC Newsworld's
news-for-young-people show The Hour. He could be our first
Governor-General with a face piercing.