AND MARIJUANA FOR ALL

Moral Panic Over Grow Ops Ignores Fact That More Of Us Puff Than Play Hockey

I am becoming embarrassed by the endless pot debate in Canada. Deputy Prime
Minister Anne McLellan recently stated that marijuana smokers are stupid
(Was this her way of saying she smokes the herb?), but the true imbecility
lies in the irresolute and confused response of our governemt to a
no-brainer issue of public policy.

Officials are trying to generate a new moral panic over grow ops. Citing a
litany of Biblical plagues like fire, mould and child neglect, police and
politicians claim that indoor marijuana-growing is turning our communities
into living hells.

With shameful audacity, there was even an attempt to link last month's
killing of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, to the cultivation
of marijuana. This week, the police services board will consider a report
from Toronto police calling for the establishment of a special "marijuana
grow team to deal with this problem."

Scarborough politicians have started going door to door like meddlesome
vigilantes to snoop around for grow ops. At a town hall meeting last week,
one councillor extolled the virtue of being "nosy" and provided this sage
advice: "Don't be nice to your neighbour." I guess the marijuana grower is
the 21st-century communist, posing such a grave threat to national security
that the situation warrants turning neighbours into spies and informants.

From my perspective, the marijuana issue is a no-brainer. There are
probably more Canadians who smoke pot than play hockey. People have been
doing this for more than 10,000 years.

No one has ever died from pot, while a number of approved pharmaceuticals
have been pulled off the market this year for causing cardiac arrest or
suicidal ideation. Growing pot is perfectly safe, but our harsh,
prohibitionist approach creates an unregulated black market in which there
is little incentive to comply with safety code standards.

Every moral panic is built on a few real tragedies. There have been grow op
fires, and I guess some homes are overrun with mould. Some people have bad
experiences smoking pot. But the occasional tragedy does not constitute a
social problem, and if the prohibitionists were right, one would expect to
find problems of epidemic proportions when there are millions of users and
thousands of grow rooms in this great country.

I believe there are six incontrovertible reasons why we should put the
tiresome marijuana debate to rest once and for all by truly giving
Canadians the liberty to grow and use the marijuana plant for personal use,
whether recreational or medical.

First, it is a plant. Criminal law should be reserved for serious predatory
conduct, and only in the world of science-fiction can a plant become a
predator.

Second, since the 1894 Indian Hemp Commission, virtually every royal
commission and governmental committee, internationally and in Canada, has
recommended that marijuana use be decriminalized. Some have even called for
outright legalization. It is an affront to democracy to continuously spend
taxpayers' money on comprehensive and informed reports that are ignored for
no apparent reason.

Third, most of Europe and Australia have decriminalized marijuana use, and
the liberalization of the law in these countries has not wreaked social
havoc. In fact, consumption rates in decriminalized jurisdictions are
significantly lower than in the penal colonies of Canada and the United States.

Fourth, the use of marijuana poses few societal dangers. It is not a
criminogenic substance. For most people, marijuana provides a form of deep
relaxation and sensory enhancement, and it does not have the unpredictable,
disinhibiting capacity of alcohol. No one is getting mugged by Cheech and
Chong, and contrary to the false alarms sounded by public officials,
marijuana is not significantly responsible for vehicular carnage.

A drug can only possess criminogenic potential if it is a disinihibitor
like alcohol or if it has addictive potential. There is little evidence
that marijuana is addictive, though many chronic users experience a
psychological dependency like that of the compulsive jogger who continues a
daily exercise regimen despite failing knees.

Fifth, marijuana is relatively harmless for the user. Admittedly, smoking
has some pulmonary risks, but we don't throw junk food makers and their
consumer-victims into jail despite the enormous burden these junkies place
on the health care system. Criminal law is not the remedy for
gastrointestinal distress, nor is it a rational solution to curbing chronic
bronchial inflammation. The solemnity and majesty of the criminal law is
trivialized when it's used to prevent Canadians from becoming a nation of
coughers and wheezers.

Of course, every month we are bombarded by media reports of some new study
linking pot to hemorrhoids or some other health risk. More often than not,
the study is reporting inconclusive findings from overdosing rats and
monkeys, or is a methodologically flawed experiment commissioned by the state.

Marijuana activists and users like myself are accused of disregarding
mounting evidence of the ravages of marijuana, but we've heard the doom and
gloom before. Even though marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug
in the world, there is no epidemiological evidence showing increased
morbidity or mortality among the toking population. But their failure to
prove that the evils attributed to marijuana are anything more than
speculative just compels the state and its scientist handmaidens to use
science as a tool for propaganda.

My final reason for denouncing the use of criminal law to manufacture
cannabis criminals is that the majority of Canadians do not support
criminalization of pot use. Democracy is an illusion when the state can
maintain a criminal prohibition on an activity enjoyed by 3 million
Canadians and tolerated by an overwhelming majority.

Even if marijuana use and production entailed more significant harm, this
would not necessarily warrant state intrusion into our private choices.
Nothing in this world is perfectly harmless.

Even flush toilets and articles of clothing can wreak havoc. Studies show
that 40,000 Americans injure themselves on their toilet seats every year,
and 100,000 are injured by their clothing annually, yet no one has tried to
demonize Sir Thomas Crapper or outlaw zippers. Young Canadians have been
paralyzed by cross-checks administered in the course of hockey games. We
accept and tolerate these risks because we believe there is social utility
in having flush toilets, clothing and competitive sports.

Yet when it comes to marijuana, we seem unwilling to tolerate any level of
risk, even though credible pharmacologists conclude that the moderate use
of marijuana causes no harm and that any suspected harm will only be found
among chronic daily users. Less than 5 per cent of users are chronic.

Most people believe that Canada has stalled on the path of law reform,
overwhelmed by the stench of American criminal justice policy. Our
government is poised to decriminalize marijuana use, yet its spokespeople
continue to demonize the plant by suggesting that a Pandora's box of
unknowable harm will come about from a few tokes. The government's message
is so mixed, it can only serve as a catalyst for inaction and confusion.

But I think our confusion has more to do with our moral ambivalence about
hedonism and the alteration of consciousness. North Americans like to see
their vices on the silver screen, not in real life, and we like to leave
consciousness-expanding experiments to great thinkers like Aldous Huxley.
The ordinary person is condemned to a life of sobriety except for the joys
and sorrows of alcohol inebriation.

We have wavered on repealing a bad law because our culture doesn't believe
there is social utility or value in drug experimentation and alteration of
consciousness. We cling to the notion that non-medical drug use is always a
degenerate and self-indulgent waste of time. State officials continue to
construct false alarms of harm and danger in order to mask their real fear
that drug use may potentially foster critical thought and alternative
visions of reality.

Experimentation with pot will not lead most people to a dramatic change of
consciousness and character, but like most illicit drugs, the temporary
alteration of perception may nourish the capacity for critical thinking.

The criminal prohibition of marijuana is all about thought control.

It doesn't matter if you're dedicated to a life of total abstention; you
should be alarmed whenever state officials weave a tapestry of lies to
justify punishing people. And even if you don't believe people should have
the right to make autonomous choices about what they do with their minds
and bodies, you should worry about a state that governs through moral panic
and not through the rational development of public policy.

The current attempt to demonize grow ops deflects attention from the
reality that while growing pot indoors is not inherently risky, the
creation of an unregulated black market is dangerous.

Prohibitionists should be ashamed of themselves for spreading lies and
hiding the fact that many of them have secretly partaken of the plant. We
are at an impasse because the government is simultaneously trying to
demonize and decriminalize. And those in power know that if you suck and
blow at the same time, nothing will happen on the path to law reform.