REFORM POT LAWS - DO IT FOR 1.5 MILLION CANADIANS

IT'S TIME to admit that one of the biggest "drug problems" in this
country is the obsolete legal framework that criminalizes, stigmatizes
and ultimately fails to regulate marijuana use.

This spring, a United Nations agency ranked Canadians in the top five
in world marijuana use. The UN calls us a land of stoners.

I think that's sheer baloney, despite the occasional whiff of pot
smoke I detect drifting down Argyle Street.

At 53 years old and having been a high school student in the late
1960s, I know what the stuff smells like. Recreational drug use has
been an issue since I was a boy.

And since those faraway days, I've been of the view that most pot
smoking is pretty harmless. When it's done in moderation, people have
fun and no one gets hurt.

I know, I know, excessive pot smoking has dangers and smoking anything
is generally not good for one's health. But I wonder if the dangers
justify the elaborate, expensive and easily abused anti-drug regime
that has dominated since the 1960s.

If more people really are smoking pot than ever before - a disputable
factoid - then the anti-pot laws have been an obvious and abject
failure. That means decades of heavy-handed enforcement, billions of
dollars for police and technology and vastly expensive court
proceedings have been mostly wasted.

On the other side of the coin, even if fewer people are smoking up,
the law can't claim credit for it. Canadians are more health-conscious
now than ever before and they stay away from smoking for that reason,
not because of legal edict.

In fact, the state itself has sent mixed messages over the years about
pot.

Ottawa has commissioned studies and proposed reforms. At the same
time, it has preached against drug use and hired cops to enforce its
anachronistic laws. It has jailed the young and saddled one in 30
Canadians with the taint of a criminal record.

I can't think of a single positive outcome from all that effort and
money.

In fact, if marijuana was simply made legal, most drug crimes and many
drug problems would disappear overnight.

That's because if you take weed away from professional dealers and
biker gangs, otherwise law-abiding pot smokers will never meet them.

Dope dealers see drugs as a business, not as recreation. And they're
the ones with more dangerous products on hand: cocaine, LSD, ecstasy,
even heroin.

Keep people away from the drug underworld and fewer will get tangled
up with stronger stuff and far fewer will get hurt.

The current Tory government is more about demonization of marijuana
than reform, sneering at reforms the previous Liberal government had
proposed. Even that fell apart due to drug paranoia in the U.S. and
worries about our borders.

But most pot smokers are peaceful citizens who have never even seen
heroin and wouldn't waste their money on cocaine.

Yet prohibition criminalizes them. And once they break one law which
seems so patently unjust, respect erodes for other laws. Meanwhile, we
support a massive enforcement structure to pick on college students
and the under-employed, rather than on child molesters and terrorists.

Top cops understand that. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police
is on record as saying that broad enforcement of pot-possession laws
steals resources from more pressing police matters.

However, the Canadian Police Association, which represents
rank-and-file cops, disagrees and wants the laws strictly enforced.
But it's the CPA's job to boost job prospects for police officers.
Anti-pot laws do that.

It's also obvious that hauling stoned kids off to jail is a lot less
hassle than, say, taking on the Mafia.

By the way, legalizing weed won't increase consumption. People in our
hyper-competitive society still have to work or study. For the vast
majority, legal weed won't change that.

And consider this. Legalizing and taxing weed could bring in big bucks
for government. In 2004, the conservative Fraser Institute estimated
Ottawa could raise as much as $2 billion a year from taxing marijuana.

According to the John Howard Society, 1.5 million Canadians have
criminal records for possession. Seven out of 10 marijuana arrests are
for just that, simple possession. Yet convictions carry the stigma of
a criminal record.

It's time, almost 40 years after the LeDain Commission called for more
liberal pot laws, to make the stuff legal. And to get rid of a
needless stigma for so many citizens.

Dan Leger is director of news content for The Chronicle Herald. The
opinions expressed here are his own.