STOP THE REEFER MADNESS

Talk about an opportunity lost. With the Bush administration making
threatening noises in the background, the federal government is about to
introduce a new marijuana strategy as stale as '70s dope.

A full 30 years after Gerald LeDain courageously recommended treating
recreational soft drug use as the minor social ill it is, Justice Minister
Martin Cauchon is responding with a plan that is so timid, so hallucinatory
in its objectives, that it suggests cabinet is suffering from reefer
madness.

Once Ottawa secures reluctant Washington's approval, those unlucky enough to
get caught with 15 grams will be ticketed, not jailed, while traffickers and
those carrying 30 grams or more will face the full fury of the law.

Oh, sure.

Police simply don't have the resources - and certainly should have something
better to do - than harassing the conservatively estimated 1.5 million
Canadians who regularly roll a joint.

And, by now, politicians should know that the decades-old war on drugs can't
be won and that bolder, more innovative, more cost-effective solutions are
overdue.

Instead, government is trying to please everyone as it scrambles to close
the yawning gap between outdated legislation and public attitudes. The sorry
result will be a law that is unenforceable and will discredit the democratic
process by putting government hopelessly out of step with consensual
morality.

In this case, the government lags laughably far behind that consensus.

Somehow, the Liberal government missed the yellowing news that the killer
weed is just a myth and that the unintended consequences of muscular
anti-drug campaigns are more damaging than the problem.

A year ago, the fuddy-duddy Senate, that somnambulant chamber of sober
second thought, concluded that a joint is not a starter kit for a future
hard drug habit; that addiction is not a significant issue; that public
money spent on enforcement is largely wasted.

A year before that, the conservative Fraser Institute blasted prohibition as
a cause of crime and corruption as well as an unwarranted intrusion into
individual rights and civil liberties.

Even the commendably cautious Canadian Medical Association found the health
effects of moderate use to be "minimal" and criticized disproportionately
harsh penalties.

So why, then, is a government that was moving toward enlightened policies
retreating in such embarrassing disarray?

As usual, the answer is found in Washington where caricature law-and-order
politicians are intimidating their northern counterparts with signals that
liberalization here will mean tighter border controls there.

It seems the U.S. wants company in its misery.

Fighting a losing battle there now costs an estimated $35 billion a year,
fills prisons, kills cops, funds organized crime as well as terrorism and,
remarkably, is not making drugs either harder to find or more expensive.

Dumb as it is, that strategy sounds a lot like Ottawa's new strategy.

Suddenly brave talk about decriminalizing marijuana is morphing into
"modernized" penalties as Cauchon reassures the business-is-booming U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency that their war will be equally aggressively
prosecuted on the northern front.

That's disappointing for both countries. Canada could be seizing the moment
to test more promising models and the U.S. should be encouraging, not
forcefully discouraging, a little low-risk experimentation.

Rather than legislation aimed at pleasing a trading partner, Ottawa should
show some backbone by introducing common-sense policies that serve this
country. It could finally catch up to LeDain's by accepting that it is
hypocritical, not to mention fruitless, to demonize soft drugs while it
profiteers on tobacco and alcohol sales.

A few simple principles could, and should, guide federal decisions.

The stigma of criminality should be exorcised from a benign activity that
only the most alarmist still consider threatening, deviant or unacceptably
socially corrosive. Police priorities should reflect public concerns, not
failed fixes from a country preoccupied with prosecution. Most important,
those principles must recognize that North America has a demand, not a
supply problem, a problem that can only be solved by removing the easy,
unconscionable profits that attract crime and violence.

But that's enough dreaming. What Canadians are getting is a strategy that at
best is a small, overdue, reform. Its constituent parts will be a possession
limit half as high as it should be, an enforcement promise that won't be
kept, and more of the sanctimonious preaching that generations take turns
ignoring.

That will be enough to keep happy the folks at the DEA who spend a cool $1.6
billion U.S. playing drug buster.

But it is far less than the Chretien government led Canadians to expect and
far less than they deserve after 30 years of waiting.