LET'S HOPE CRIME FIGHTERS DON'T GO UP IN SMOKE

You might call it reefer madness, but I'm starting to wonder if there
may be something positive that will come out of the two politicians
going door to door in their area, in search of marijuana grow houses.

There's a bumper crop of examples of crime-fighting duos in the
movies, literature and on TV. Often they're our heroes. Just think of
Sherlock Holmes and Watson, or Starsky and Hutch, Freebie and the
Bean, or Clint Eastwood and Clyde, the orangutan.

So why not two real-life heroes right here, who might even spur on
their own Canadian TV show? (It couldn't be any worse than what's on
TV right now.)

Just imagine an announcer with a deep voice reading the intro over
funky guitar riffs...

"They're brave, they're brash and they have a nose that knows where the
marijuana grows. They are Councillor Mike del Grande and MP Jim
Karygiannis, but people in the 'hood call them Huff and Puff. Why? Because
they'll huff, and they'll puff and they'll bloooow your marijuana grow
house down! They don't care if there's no pigs around. They're looking
after this problem their own way, in their own time." (Guitar:
wahowahowahowowow...)

Even though the show could illuminate us on the dangers of having
marijuana farmers as people in our neighbourhood, there'd also be some
opportunities in each script for lighter moments.

Like Mike Del Grande or Jim Karygiannis (a.k.a. Huff and Puff, also
known as M.D.G. and Jimmy K.) at a family's door around the supper
hour arresting some 12-year-old kid who says, "What do mean I'm
'busted'. This is broccoli!"

Or the two of them tailing a potato chip truck to its next
destination, which turns out to be a grocery store, where the duo
mistakenly puts the cuffs on the cashier in the plants section.

Or hiding in the bushes on a stakeout, in mid-winter, as no one goes
to an abandoned house they suspect is a grow-op, day after day after
day. They're finally brought to emergency, frozen as stiff as a couple
of Mel's moose, their feet in the air, binoculars stuck to their eye
sockets. The emergency room nurse says, "Not you two #$%&&+#s again!"

So there's three episodes right there.

Personally, I admire politicians who don't sit around and do nothing.
So I give them credit for that. I really do.

I just think anyone going around knocking on doors looking for
grow-ops might get themselves snuffed out. Which would be an awful
thing to happen and would also necessitate two byelections, and we all
know how costly and moronic a process that can be.

Certainly they are more brave than I am. If I happened upon a grow
house with someone inside, with my quick thinking in moments of
crisis, I'd essentially freeze, and then get kidnapped, robbed, or
shot. They'd tie me up and shove hash brownies down my throat, then
dangle munchies in front of my face for two hours until I finally
broke down and told them everything I know. Which is not very much.

What I find surprising about these two, though, especially in the case
of Karygiannis, is that he is a member of the ruling Liberal party, in
other words the federal government that makes the laws. If tougher
measures for grow-op operators are in order, all his party has to do
is implement them.

In Del Grande's case, if the city wanted to create a large police task
force to tackle grow-ops, they could do that, too. That's where things
need to happen, at city hall.

The fact that they're going door to door (Knock, knock: "Um, excuse
me, are you growing hundreds of pot plants in this house, which will
be worth thousands if not millions when sold on the street? Because
you know that's illegal, eh? You're not? Are you sure?") is almost an
admission that government is useless in helping solve this problem and
that the only way to bust a grow-op is to figure out where it is and
call the police. There's got to be a better way.

Meanwhile, the new federal approach to all this is a mess, in my
opinion, making possession of pot less of a legal problem, but growing
it more of one.

They're just upping the demand, while trying to cut off the supply,
making it even more lucrative for someone to take that risk and grow
pot for profit. So yet another house is filled with criminals, guns,
booby traps, and rigged electrical wiring. Makes you wonder what
they've been smoking up there in Ottawa. Must be some good stuff.