A HAZY APPROACH TO POT LAW

Early in the movie Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino's very dark 1994
comedy, John Travolta, playing the slow-witted hit-man Vincent Vega,
offers a wonderfully ambiguous interpretation of Dutch soft-drug law
that Paul Martin should commit to memory.

Asked about smoking dope in Amsterdam's famous hash cafes, Vega tells
his fellow thug, "It's legal, but it ain't 100 per cent legal."

Fast-forward to the threshold of 2004 and Travolta could just as
easily be talking about the ambiguity, if not the detail, of Canada's
enlightened, but not 100 per cent enlightened, approach to the
recreational use of the devil's weed.

Sometime in the first months of next year, the federal government will
again introduce legislation taking the criminality out of simple
possession but promising fire and brimstone for those who grow or
peddle it for profit.

In other words, or just to play with Travolta's words, it will be sort
of okay to smoke it, but it won't be at all okay to match supply to
demand.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday on three watershed cases that
challenged the constitutionality of marijuana laws. The plaintiffs
argued the laws impose unduly harsh penalties on a widespread practice
that does little harm. The high court ruled that the laws are
constitutional and said it's up to Parliament to change them.

Even though those laws were upheld, Martin is committed to new
legislation that will uphold the spirit of a bill that died last month
when one Liberal administration grudgingly succeeded another.

Following Martin's increasingly familiar something-for-everyone
formula, it will remove the stigma of a criminal record for those
caught passing a joint even as it targets the so-called grow-ops and
major marketers.

If that seems like hypocrisy, it is at least shared
hypocrisy.

Across much of Europe, and even in a few progressive states south of
the border, the preferred soft drug strategy is to dismiss usage as a
misdemeanour while falling back on muscular and patently ineffectual
practices to control supply.

For Martin, that's a case of policy intersecting with personal
experience. As he joked in year-end interviews, sometime long ago he
ate some strange-tasting brownies baked by wife Sheila, but, like so
many politicians, never inhaled any of that sweet smelling smoke.

So if Martin were starring in Pulp Fiction rather than the federal
Liberal's long-running movie, he would be able to say with a straight
face that, under the proposed federal law, eating those brownies would
be legal, but not 100 per cent legal.

As for the still anonymous suppliers of Sheila's hash, well, they
could find themselves facing the full, uncompromising wrath of the
justice system.

That's silly for many reasons.

Focusing on a narrow part of a wildly exaggerated social problem makes
about as much sense as claims that tougher penalties will take the
bloom off a booming underground business.

What's far more likely is that demand will increase along with
criminal control over production and delivery, making policing more
difficult and dangerous for law enforcement agencies with limited
resources and, presumably, more pressing priorities.

A more radical approach would be to set a more direct course toward
the greatest public interest and then design policies with a
reasonable chance of getting there. Surely that would include breaking
the connection between gangs and drugs as well as enacting legislation
that reflects modern norms, not statutes that further distance
politicians and police from otherwise law-abiding citizens.

In a more perfect world, more innovative law would separate drugs that
addict and kill from those that do not.

They would regulate rather than prohibit and they would recognize the
legitimate concern that what society doesn't need is a new,
hard-to-detect group of impaired, if happy, folks.

It's instructive that one of Tuesday's Supreme Court rulings directly
touched those issues.

Arguing his own case, a rarity in such an august legal setting, David
Malmo-Levine focused on how best to manage the practical problems
associated with a substance that is arguably a lesser threat than alcohol.

Malmo-Levine's Harm Reduction Club sold only organic marijuana to
those who read a safe-smoking guide and promised not to drive or
operate heavy equipment.

Naive as that seems, is it any more so than the expectation that the
proposed federal legislation will change behaviour or put more pushers
behind bars?

The law Canada will adopt next year will be all about political
pragmatism.

It will carefully weigh public opinion as well as police pressure in
taking a very tentative half-step in the right direction.

To paraphrase Vincent Vega, that won't be bad public policy, it just
won't be 100 per cent good public policy.