UP IN SMOKE?

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the Supreme Court of Canada's
6-3 decision to uphold the laws prohibiting possession of marijuana is
the reaction of John Walters, the United States' drug czar.

Walters was positively abuzz with excitement upon learning that
Canada's top court had decided that the possession law is
constitutionally valid.

This is, of course, not new. When the federal Liberals had drafted a
bill to decriminalize simple possession of pot, Martin Cauchon, then
the justice minister, actually flew to Washington last spring to
essentially obtain permission from U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft
to liberalize marijuana laws here. That Cauchon presented the pot
proposal to a foreign country before allowing Canada's own House of
Commons to view it was astounding. That the issue didn't generate a
wave of outrage among the public is even more appalling.

When Jean Chretien had introduced the original bill to decriminalize
simple possession of pot - a bill that will be re-introduced next year
- - Walters and the Bush administration had the audacity to charge that
Canada was the only country in the West to mishandle its drug policy.

Such a charge is laughable, when one considers how corrupt and inept
the U.S. war on drugs really is: The CIA imported cocaine to sell on
American street corners to raise money to fund the Contras in their
guerrilla war against President Daniel Ortega's Sandinista government
in Nicaragua in the 1980s. This is not some wild-eyed conspiracy
theory. It is a documented fact presented in Senate hearings in Washington.

NDP leader Jack Layton's words, spoken following Cauchon's astonishing
visit to Washington, D.C. last spring, ring as true today: "There goes
Canadian sovereignty up in smoke."