SMOKING JUDGE STRIKES BLOW FOR POT PUFFERS

Mary Southin, B.C.'s smoking judge, is in the news again. This time, it's
not because of her tobacco addiction, which caused a flap because of the
cost the government incurred to allow her to keep puffing away at her job
on the Court of Appeal.

This time, it's a different kind of smoking that brings one of our most
outspoken justices to public attention: pot smoking and her change of heart
on the war on marijuana.

This case, and the judgement by the appeal court, turned heads for more
than one reason. It concerned the actions of Vancouver cops who, following
police policy, used a battering ram to bust into a suspected grow-op
unannounced. They found an indoor pot farm and laid charges. A lower court
found the couple that had engaged in that particular horticultural
enterprise guilty.

A three-judge panel led by Mr. Justice William Esson at the B.C. Court of
Appeal unanimously ruled, however, that the evidence collected should be
excluded. The justices said the police breached the accused's Charter rights.

Esson wrote: "The most significant breach was that the entry into the
residence was carried out without any compliance with the knock/notice
rule, which has been part of the common law for centuries; a rule of
fundamental importance in protecting residents of dwellings from
unreasonable search and seizure."

Mary Southin used the Charter as a jumping-off point for her own comments.
What followed is arguably the most devastating and witty indictment of
marijuana laws ever delivered from the bench.

She said her views have clearly changed from the days when she thought
marijuana infractions were a serious criminal offence. She now believes
that marijuana "appears to be of no greater danger to society than alcohol."

She takes a withering shot at federal lawmakers: "I have not yet abandoned
my conviction that Parliament has a constitutional right to be hoodwinked,
as it was in the 1920s and 1930s by the propaganda against marihuana, and
to remain hoodwinked."

Southin dismisses the futile war on marijuana embraced by Canadian criminal
law. "The growing, trafficking in, and possession of marihuana [sic]... is
the source of much work, not only for peace officers but also for lawyers
and judges. Whether that work contributes to peace, order and good
government is another matter."

All of this is especially relevant when you consider our government is on
the verge of decriminalizing marijuana. It's hardly any change at all
compared with recommendations in a recent senate committee report that
marijuana be legalized.

What Ottawa is doing, even though it was condemned by the White House's
drug czar, will do nothing much for the excesses in the war on this
substance, which Southin traces to an American-inspired policy dating back
more than a century.

She ridicules the notorious U.S. propaganda film "Reefer Madness," which
concludes that smoking pot inevitably leads to insanity.

Southin says: "I have been driven to the conclusion that, in the eyes of
those who not only lead their own country (America) but also this country
into making criminals of those who are no better or worse, morally or
physically, than people who martini, marihuana was the first weapon of mass
destruction."

While folks who advocate legalizing marijuana, including Mayor Larry
Campbell, will take comfort from Southin's words, her critics will wonder
what she's really been smoking in her newly ventilated chambers.

As for me, I recommend you read her remarkable comments. Go to
www.courts.gov.bc and follow the links to the June 20 appeal court ruling
on R. v. Schedel.