BLAME CANADA FOR 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.