EASING POT LAWS

PRIME Minister Paul Martin and his government intend to go ahead and
decriminalize the possession of small quantities of marijuana, as they
were going to do before. This will be a modest but constructive step
toward the tolerant policy that should eventually prevail in both
Canada and the United States.

At the moment, possession of any amount of marijuana in Canada is a
crime. A person caught with marijuana can be charged and convicted
with the result that they can never travel to the United States and
are forever barred from certain jobs. The police and the courts have
in the main quit enforcing the law on simple possession because few
people believe that occasional, recreational use of marijuana is such
a terrible thing that it should be treated as a crime. The law remains
on the books because governments have been reluctant to arouse
controversy by repealing it.

In the United States, government policy, led by the Drug Enforcement
Administration, strenuously denounces marijuana on the grounds that
people who become dependent on marijuana often become users of other
drugs or commit crimes. Despite dire warnings from the government and
stern repression by police and courts, the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services estimates that about 2.5 million new users each
year try marijuana for their first time. First-time users were
estimated at 3.2 million per year in the mid-1970s, when interest in
the drug was at its height, and at 1.4 million per year in 1990, when
it fell out of fashion.

Marijuana use has increased slightly in Canada, as in the U.S. A
survey by Statistics Canada published yesterday estimated that the
proportion of Canadians who had used cannabis in the last year rose to
12.2 per cent in 2002 from 6.5 per cent in 1989.

In both countries, therefore, cannabis is a minority taste but a
widespread one. A lot of teenagers or young adults use marijuana, the
data suggest, but few continue using the drug after age 25. Canada
tolerates it, the U.S. tries to stamp it out, but the behaviour of
users is broadly similar in the two countries. Since the U.S. is still
trying to stamp out cannabis, it would probably see wide-open
toleration in Canada as an unfriendly act, dangling forbidden leaves
in front of American adolescents. But Canada need not pin criminal
records on tens of thousands of young people just to please the Drug
Enforcement Administration.

Decriminalization in Canada will probably prove to Canadians and
Americans alike that a tolerant policy produces little or no change in
cannabis use. This should encourage reformers in both countries to
move still further toward lighter restrictions and lighter penalties.
It should also encourage employers and police to become more astute
about detecting drivers or workers who are impaired by marijuana. Once
the penalties imposed by law are removed, the main danger to be dealt
with will be people who report for work or try to drive a vehicle
under the influence of cannabis.