GETTING BURNED BY THE BUTT LAW

Last Jan. 18, police in New Glasgow, N.S., made a major bust. They managed
to infiltrate Dooly's Billiard Room, where they observed several patrons
committing illegal acts. Among those charged were barmaid Candace Mason,
21, and manager Terra MacLean, who were permitting customers to flagrantly
violate the law.

In court, one of the constables told the judge that he had seen four people
in the act of smoking cigarettes. He saw two other people sitting at a
table with a lit cigarette resting in an ashtray. Not only that, there were
ashtrays on every table, indicating a clear intent to flout the law. And
even though the two women clearly had knowledge of illegal smoking, they
had done nothing to stop it.

Under Nova Scotia's tough new Smoke-Free Places Act, that's a crime. Both
smokers and the proprietors of establishments in which they're caught face
fines of up to $2,000.

Forgive me for feeling slightly dizzy. But it's hard to comprehend that
smoking cigarettes is about to be a bigger crime than smoking marijuana.

If the government's new pot bill passes (and God knows it should -- after
SARS, mad-cow and West Nile, we need to mellow out), the fine for smoking a
joint will be less in some places than the fine for lighting up a Marlboro.
And no problem for the pool hall's barmaids, either. Nova Scotia's
Smoke-Free Places Act stipulates that "smoke" refers only to tobacco.

"I think it's a perfect picture of just how ridiculous government is
sometimes," says Halifax bar owner Victor Syperek, speaking for the
anti-anti-smoking lobby.

Some of us remember when the world was a simpler place. Cigarettes were
sophisticated, and everybody smoked everywhere. I loved going to university
because you could puff away in class.

Pot, on the other hand, forced you to puff away in secret, or at your
professor's house. The authorities would throw you in jail for weeks on end
if they found an old roach in your car. This was a serious drawback. Also,
smoking marijuana led to more dangerous addictions, though not the ones we
were warned against. It produced an insatiable craving for jelly doughnuts
from Tim Hortons, on which my friends and I frequently overdosed.
Cigarettes, we found, make you thin and focused. Grass makes you fat and fuzzy.

But only the lower classes smoke cigarettes without shame any more. All the
rest of us feel guilty. My friends hide it from their children, the way
they used to hide it from their parents. "Please don't tell my son I
smoke!" one friend begged me as she puffed away in the garage.

The new smoking bylaw is not popular in New Glasgow. "Most people don't
agree with it," says Dawn Matheson, another bartender at Dooly's. "A lot of
them feel it should be their own decision." New Glasgow, however, is a
small and backward place. In the more enlightened centres of Halifax,
Toronto and New York, the clampdown on smoking is widely applauded by the
opinion elites as a sign of social progress.

Those same elites are mighty chuffed about Canada's move to decriminalize
pot. They think it's just one more sign of how enlightened and progressive
we are, compared to those backward yahoos across the border. They see no
contradiction between decriminalizing one substance and banning a whole
bunch of other ones, even though they are equally, if not more, innocuous.

In Toronto, you'll soon be fined $250 for spraying your grass with
dandelion killer. (Common herbicides have already been declared illegal in
Halifax and dozens of other cities because people believe they give
children brain cancer.) In Halifax, people are forbidden to wear perfume or
aftershave, because someone might be allergic to it. Back in Toronto, you
can be fined for not sorting your garbage properly. I will say nothing of
the criminalization of harmless gun owners, who are now forced to sign up
with a $1-billion gun registry that has failed to halt a single gun crime.

Even the pot law isn't very liberal, since it says it's basically okay to
smoke dope but even more wicked than before to grow and sell it. Try
explaining this reasoning to your kids.

The government plans to square this circle with a $240-million
public-education campaign about the dangers of the evil weed. (Warning:
Dope can make you fat.) But it won't work. The new law will be a giant
windfall for the triads, Hells Angels and the other swell folks who control
the supply chain, as anyone who took Economics 101 can figure out.

The good thing is that decriminalization will free up the police and courts
for more important things -- like prosecuting smokers. Back in New Glasgow,
the judge let the Dooly's barmaid off the hook last week because she was
just the barmaid, not the manager. The manager's trial is later this month.
There are a dozen more like it in the works.