LET'S REMEMBER PROHIBITION - AND LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

The commercial cultivation of marijuana, once largely confined to
British Columbia, has spread nationwide. In Ontario, the harvest has
grown by an estimated 250 per cent in the past two years. Police
recently raided grow-ops in Moncton. In Edmonton, real-estate agents
are exploring their legal liability for selling a house that turns out
to have been a nursery.

Remember this, when you consider Bill C-17.

The Liberal government's third attempt at decriminalizing marijuana
possession was introduced in the House yesterday. Whether the bill
makes it into law will largely depend on whether Parliament lasts long
enough to get it through.

Ottawa has been considering such legislation now for a year and a
half. In that time, as usual, political considerations have fallen
behind reality.

Evidence is sketchy -- there is, as yet, no marijuana marketing board
- -- but various studies suggest that pot is now one of Canada's major
cash crops. RCMP marijuana-plant seizures have increased fourfold in
the past four years. The Electricity Distributors Association
estimates that Ontario utilities are losing as much as $200-million a
year from illegal taps of power lines by grow-ops. Some people believe
the retail value of the national marijuana harvest surpasses the wheat
or dairy industries.

In an effort to control the spread of grow-ops, governments are
skirting with unconstitutional laws. The Ontario government has
introduced legislation that would permit authorities to cut power to
homes suspected of growing marijuana.

At the federal level, Bill C-16, which was also introduced yesterday,
will expand police powers to compel blood, saliva or urine tests for
suspected drugged drivers. Both laws may well offend the Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.

Today, the Mounties begin a two-day conference on the problem of
grow-ops and what to do about them. They are unlikely to grapple with
the real solution.

We are rapidly moving to the point where the state will have no choice
but to move beyond decriminalization and toward legalization and
regulation. Otherwise, we could be back to the 1920s and the challenge
to state power that accompanied Prohibition.

According to Statistics Canada, 12 per cent of adult Canadians in 2002
admitted to smoking pot at least once in the previous 12 months. (The
real number is probably higher.) That doesn't make it a good thing,
but it does make it a common, socially acceptable, thing.

Opponents of legalization point to the many safety hazards of pot
consumption: It can be far worse for your lungs than cigarettes; it is
addictive (psychologically, if not physically); and putting it in the
hands of Labatt or Imperial Tobacco would offer societal sanction of a
dangerous drug.

Except that society already regulates tobacco and alcohol because
they're dangerous. Banning them is impossible, given their widespread
use, and so governments permit their sale under strict conditions,
accompanied by heavy taxation to mitigate their societal cost.

Regulating cannabis would provide a cash crop for the struggling
agriculture sector that, rest assured, would not require government
subsidies.

Strict laws and punitive taxes would make sure the weed would be no
easier for underage tokers to obtain than it already is.

Legalization would be a blow to organized crime, would improve health
and safety conditions among cultivators, would increase tax revenues,
and would relieve governments of the temptation to violate the
Constitution in their futile efforts to shut down the industry.

We shouldn't be legalizing marijuana because we want to feel all
right. We should be legalizing and regulating it in recognition of the
truth that this soft but potentially dangerous drug has crossed the
threshold of respectability in middle-class society.

Let Parliament pass Bill C-17. (Bill C-16 may need another look.) Then
let's get to work on the bigger job of figuring out how to control
recreational drug use in a society that has decided there's nothing
wrong with occasionally getting stoned.