CANADA'S PROPOSED LEGISLATION TO CHANGE MARIJUANA LAWS

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

Tomorrow, organ donation. Currently if you want to donate your organs
after your death your family can overturn that decision. A proposed change
would honor a person's right to donate, even if their family says no. What
do you think? Call us tomorrow at this time on TALK OF THE NATION.

This week, Canada introduced legislation that would change its marijuana
laws. The penalty for growing pot would be increased. But the idea that's
getting the most attention is the decriminalization of possession of small
amounts of marijuana. US officials are concerned that looser laws in
Canada could increase the amount of pot crossing the border to the United
States.

What do you think of Canada's proposal? Join the conversation. Our number
is (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.

Mitch Earleywine is the author of "Understanding Marijuana." He's an
associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California,
and we reached him in Los Angeles.

Good of you to be with us.

Professor MITCH EARLEYWINE (University of Southern California): Glad to be
back.

CONAN: Can you explain the legislation that's introduced in the Canadian
parliament this week?

Prof. EARLEYWINE: The new law would essentially make it just a civil
offense if you have 15 grams of marijuana or less. So instead of having to
go down and get fingerprinted and have a whole prosecution, you just simply
would get the equivalent of a traffic ticket for having that much marijuana.

CONAN: And 15 grams is roughly half an ounce.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: Exactly.

CONAN: Now there are other laws, as we mentioned. The penalties for
growing pot would be increased.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: The idea is to actually increase those up to perhaps 14
years if you're cultivating marijuana, so you could be in prison for 14
years if you grew the plant itself.

CONAN: There are parts of this country where marijuana growing is described
as the largest cash crop, and then you pick it from wherever region you
want to talk about. Is this a big industry in Canada as well?

Prof. EARLEYWINE: As it turns out, some of the estimates, between two
billion and probably eight billion, are pretty credible, so there's a lot
of money there.

CONAN: And that's a lot of money even in Canadian dollars.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: Exactly.

CONAN: Are there any hidden costs to this new decriminalization proposal in
Canada?

Prof. EARLEYWINE: Rather than hidden costs I could see a lot of
benefits. I think they're going to save a lot of money and a lot of time
for law enforcement folks. When I talk to police officers in Australia,
for example, where they've decriminalized, they really appreciate being
able to write a ticket instead of having to go through the whole process of
getting somebody booked in order to enforce these kinds of laws.

CONAN: And that doesn't really say whether they're in favor of marijuana
laws) or not. It's just if you bring somebody in for the possession of a
small amount of marijuana even today, they're not likely to do a big arrest.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: Yeah. The prosecutors actually don't really want to
spend their time on that. In comparison, for example, in California, which
has about the same population as Canada, we've saved about 200 million
every year just by changing the laws to a decriminalization approach, and
I'm sure Canada could save that much money as well.

CONAN: How much marijuana crosses the border from Canada now? Is this an
industrial--I mean, you're talking billions of dollars. That's an awful
lot of pot.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: There's definitely the potential for a lot. I know the
Puget Sound area, the border between, say, Washington and British Columbia
claims to have a lot of marijuana coming back and forth. But the idea that
it's even a billion is still unclear and difficult to estimate.

CONAN: So it's not clear that Canada is anything like a major exporter and
its obvious market would be in this country.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: Well, and a whole lot of marijuana in the United States
is produced domestically, so I would say at least a third of the cannabis
in the United States comes from here in the United States. And I could
certainly see American entrepreneurs stepping up to fill any gaps that
might be showing up if Canada suddenly has worse enforcement.

CONAN: Are you aware of American growers who export to Canada?

Prof. EARLEYWINE: That's not a statistic that's easy to find, and I
certainly don't know any personally.

CONAN: Now you mention Puget Sound. Guarding the US-Canadian border would
be, you know--trying to prevent this would be very, very difficult.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: It'd be extremely expensive. We're talking about one of
the largest borders in the world, and a whole lot of places where you could
literally just step right across. It's not like there's a giant wall in
between these two countries.

CONAN: Now the Bush administration has said in its response to these
changes in laws in Canada, which it opposes and has made no bones about
that, but it said, you know, if that's the case they're worried about
increased flow of marijuana across the border into the United States, and
they might have to tighten controls at the border.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: I think that's potentially there, but I think they might
want to consider if it's really worth the price. If they do prevent all
marijuana from coming down from Canada, domestic growers will just increase
their production. I think Canada is going to see a lot more American
tourism under this program as well. So I don't know if that's really the
best use of law enforcement dollars.

CONAN: Our telephone number again is (800) 989-8255, (800) 989-TALK. Our
e-mail address: totn@npr.org. And on the line with us is Megan, who's in
Seattle.

MEGAN (Caller): Hello.

CONAN: Hi.

MEGAN: Good afternoon. I'm fairly young. I'm 17. And I'm just interested
in if Canada is loosening their laws as far as marijuana goes, do you think
down the road someday that could trickle down into our system and perhaps,
you know, we'd, down the road, have legalization of marijuana?

Prof. EARLEYWINE: Well, 12 states and the District of Columbia in the
United States have already decriminalized in one form or another. And I do
think at the individual state level we're probably going to see more of
that. As the United States becomes more of an anomaly in this--Australia,
Spain, Italy, other places that have taken decriminalization approaches--I
think it's going to become more and more obvious that this just isn't the
best use of the money that we have.

MEGAN: Do you think there is a turning point as far as the view on marijuana?

Prof. EARLEYWINE: Well, now with the medical marijuana statistic suggesting
that 80 percent of Americans or more tend to approve of that, and that more
and more folks feel like marijuana possession isn't something that should
land you in jail, we'll gradually see a shift in that direction, I think
probably at the state level first, each individual state deciding that
that's the way they want to do it.

CONAN: Megan, I wonder, if you're 17 I don't see how you could have escaped
all those television commercials that we see about the dangers of
marijuana. Do you see them? What do you think of them?

MEGAN: I do. I've seen it on MTV, and they actually make me a little bit
angry because they say--the one I'm specifically relating to has an
advertisement for a teen-ager smoking marijuana and it says, I think, over
a million cases each--or 1 percent or some percentile--everybody has had
marijuana of one form or another in their system. And I was running the
numbers, and I didn't exactly see that that matched.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: A number of their statistics are kind of hard to follow.
And some of the things...

MEGAN: Yeah, they are.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: ...don't make any sense. The one where the little girl
is pregnant and they say that marijuana got her pregnant is, of course,
pretty laughable.

MEGAN: Yes. That was kind of uncalled for. I mean, I think marijuana can
be used for a lot of different things, and I think we're really focusing on
the bad that it creates. And maybe, you know, if things happen and
overturn that, down the road we can see the good that can come out of it.

CONAN: Well, Megan, your line's breaking up, but we appreciate your thoughts.

MEGAN: Thank you.

CONAN: OK. Mitch Earleywine, there's another set of commercials that are
run for grown-ups, and this has to do with the linkage of marijuana to,
well, the fact that it's illegal, that if you're buying marijuana you're
supporting, and their argument is, terrorism and international gangsters.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: I, in fact, wrote the Office of National Drug Control
Policy about that particular commercial because it just doesn't make any
sense to me. And they've decided that they're probably going to pull that
because so much of marijuana in the United States comes from the United
States. It really just doesn't follow that this is supporting a terrorist
act somewhere on the other side of the world. I do think, also, some of
the allusions that this leads to date rape or even impaired driving is
sometimes overstated in these commercials.

CONAN: Yet it certainly is illegal. There are certainly any number of
people in this country, thousands of people in this country, in jail for
relatively small amounts of marijuana.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: Oh, it's pretty insane. Over 700,000 people were
arrested on marijuana-related offenses last year, and over 80 percent of
them were just simple possession charges. So if we didn't have to actually
arrest those people and could simply write them a ticket, you can imagine
all the law enforcement time and money we could save, and as well as time
in the justice system.

CONAN: Now we talked about this as an industry in Canada. How big a
business is this in the United States?

Prof. EARLEYWINE: The $10 billion estimate is probably the most accurate as
far as that's concerned. And you can imagine it's one of the top three or
four cash crops here in the United States.

CONAN: And if you're growing that much marijuana, it's hard to imagine that
you can do it very long or very successfully without a lot of people
knowing that you're doing it.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: That is definitely the case, and you could see how that
could lead to certain forms of corruption within law enforcement. It's also
led) to some disrespect for the law among our citizens. And I think if we
did move to a decriminalization policy, people would have less of that problem.

CONAN: We're discussing the decision in Canada to consider changes in
marijuana laws. Again, some of the penalties for growing marijuana would be
increased. But the one idea that's getting the most attention is to
decriminalize possession of about half an ounce of marijuana or less. Our
guest is Mitch Earleywine. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR
News.

And let's get another caller involved. Angela. Angela joins us on the
line from San Jose, California.

ANGELA (Caller): Hi. How are you?

CONAN: OK.

ANGELA: Great. I was just wondering what the reasoning--I guess I
understand the reasoning, but my problem with the idea of decriminalizing
possession of marijuana but then having more stringent laws with growing
marijuana--what that makes me think is that what you're really doing is
encouraging illegal drug trade, say, from Mexico or from other places like
that.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: I agree. I'm afraid you're right. The idea of cracking
down on growers now may actually inadvertently increase that underground
market. An idea that was originally floated was that maybe each person
could have two plants, for example. Might make it much easier for
individuals to grow their own cannabis and not be connected to any other
underground market. Also, that underground market is often where people get
exposed to drugs that really create problems, like cocaine and heroin and
things like that. So I do feel like this Canadian step is a step forward,
but maybe the cracking down on growth of the plant has been something just
to sort of appease the Bush administration.

ANGELA: I agree.

CONAN: Angela, thanks very much for the call.

ANGELA: Thank you.

CONAN: When you're talking about that, though, I mean, there's one, I
guess, idea behind, well, you know, this person has, you know, less than
half an ounce of marijuana. Clearly that's for their own use and, you
know, not a threat to become a major distributor. On the other hand,
somebody who's growing industrial amounts of marijuana and distributing it,
with the way the laws are now this person is a criminal.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: And, in fact, I completely understand that. But do we
decide that somebody's a criminal for having a single plant in his back
yard that's obviously for his own use? And I think at least there have
been some mutterings in Canada that they would crack down along those
lines. We'll have to see if that really plays out.

CONAN: So this would be along the lines of during prohibition of alcohol in
this country you were allowed to brew your own home beer or ferment some wine.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: And, in fact, as long as it wasn't so much that it looked
like you were going to be dealing in some way, people seemed to turn a
blind eye.

CONAN: And again, it's that dealing part that I guess gets people upset.

Do you think that this Canadian legislation--obviously the effect on the
Bush administration has been to make it very critical of the Chretien
government in Ottawa.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: I really don't understand that critique because this is
really going to save Canadians a lot of money, and their law enforcement
and judicial system can focus on more important things like violent crime.

CONAN: Where do you think the legislation--I guess Maryland is the most
recent state in this country to pass a medical marijuana law. There is
still, obviously, an enormous tension with the federal government, which
insists that these laws, while they may be on the books in the states,
they're not going to be recognized by the federal government, which regards
marijuana as a controlled) substance and that's the law in Congress. Do
you see that this is going to be a movement that is going to spread from
state legislatures to the Congress of the United States?

Prof. EARLEYWINE: In fact, the Congress of the United States already has a
bill before it to at least leave distributors of medical cannabis alone if
their states have approved medical use. And I do feel like this is on the
rise. Every time I'm on the radio there's a new number and a higher number
of states who've approved medical cannabis. Eighty percent of Americans
approve it. The idea that each individual state could arrange to
distribute medical marijuana in its own way seems consistent with the ideas
of federalism that the United States was supposed to stand for.

CONAN: There are a lot of laws that get introduced in Congress. Some of
them have a chance of passage. Do you think this one does?

Prof. EARLEYWINE: I think it's got a better chance than it ever has. It's
got more co-sponsors than I've seen it have in the past. And I feel like a
lot of folks are ringing the phones off the hook in their legislators'
offices to make sure that they understand that they really support this idea.

CONAN: A better chance than ever. I'll take that as a no, it doesn't have
a chance of passage.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: Well, I'm cautiously optimistic.

CONAN: You're cautiously optimistic. And given those statistics--well, I
think we have time for one more caller. Shane joins us on the line from
Raleigh, North Carolina.

Shane, if you could keep it quick.

SHANE (Caller): Yes. I was just wanting to say that based on President
Bush's foreign policies, I can't believe that if he wants to oppose this
law in Canada that he will not, and find a way through economic trade or
some other means to make sure that this doesn't get enacted in Canada.

CONAN: Well, Mitch Earleywine, a lot of people say the threat to tighten up
border controls is exactly that.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: And, in fact, I do think that's consistent with a kind of
economic sanction on the Bush administration's part. We'll have to see if
Canada has the guts to sort of stand up to that.

CONAN: Shane, I'm afraid we're out of time, but we appreciate your phone call.

SHANE: Thank you.

CONAN: Mitch Earleywine, also, thanks to you for speaking with us today.

Prof. EARLEYWINE: My pleasure to be back, Neal.

CONAN: Mitch Earleywine is the author of "Understanding Marijuana." He's an
associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California.
We reached him in Los Angeles, California.

In Washington, I'm Neal Conan, NPR News.