LEGALIZE POT, END GROW HOUSES

Grow houses are bad, bad places.

The problem with grow houses isn't that they produce marijuana, but
how they produce marijuana. First of all, they use amateur
electricians to steal power. Not only does this drive up hydro rates
for those of us not growing weed, using an amateur electrician to hook
up your hydro is about as wise as letting an amateur brain surgeon
remove a tumour from your frontal lobe. The combination of suspect
wiring and the intense humidity created by having hundreds, and
sometimes thousands of plants crammed together in a small space makes
grow houses first-class fire traps.

Not only are they highly flammable, but grow houses are also
frequently filled with booby traps to keep thieves away from the crop.
When firefighters come to a call at a grow house, not only are they in
danger from the inferno, but also from the various implements of death
surrounding the house.

Given the inherent danger of having grow houses in residential
neighbourhoods, it's hard to object to Community Safety Minister Monte
Kwinter's proposal to give hydro companies - the people who are most
able to locate probable grow houses - the authority to cut the power
to suspected grow houses and turn their location over to police. It
makes sense to have these dangerous operations shut down before they
catch fire, as opposed to after.

What makes more sense, however, is for the government to legalize and
regulate the growing and distribution of marijuana, eliminating the
criminal element and the accompanying danger entirely.

I'm not going to be one of those potheads who desperately tries to
convince the masses that marijuana is harmless; it's not. Major league
stoners have long, drawn out conversations that go nowhere, they
frequently forget things, like their keys or their names, and
sometimes their brains get so irreparably damaged that they start to
think that Phish is a really good band.

What is easy to argue is the fact that the time, effort and resources
put into stopping the growth and sale of marijuana are way out of
proportion to the negative effects the drug has on society. To a
cynic, the campaign against ganja seems to have more to do with
governments' desire to curry favour with our neighbour to the south by
taking part in their ill-advised war on drugs that it does with a
legitimate concern over the brain cells of a generation.

Decriminalization as proposed by the Chretien administration would not
go far enough. While it would prevent otherwise law-abiding citizens
from getting criminal records for holding small amounts of dope, it
would still leave marijuana production in the hands of outlaws,
meaning that dangerous grow houses would still exist.

If brain cells and crippling addiction were really at issue, the
government would have never lifted the prohibition on alcohol, a drug
that kills hundred of people every year and provokes thousands to
fight much bigger people, make early-morning calls to their exes and
puke on their new Etnies. Marijuana isn't more dangerous than alcohol
because it's a more dangerous substance. It's more dangerous because
the people who produce it are dangerous.