VAPORIZING THE THREAT OF A WEED BUST

On a weekend afternoon at the Hot Box Cafe in Kensington Market, three
young women are sipping greenish blender drinks. Up on a chalkboard
are the house rules, which include "no smoking" and, in big, capital
letters, "BYOP." On the table is something that resembles an electric
pencil sharpener, with a clear plastic tube coming out the front of
it. Every once in a while, one of the women takes it to her lips for a
quick puff. There's no smoke, no smell - nothing to hint that they're
getting the exact same hit of THC from this contraption as they would
from a joint.

The device is called a vaporizer, and after five years on the market
it's starting to move toward the mainstream. "People are starting to
discover them now," says Adi Roach, owner of Roach-o-Rama and the Hot
Box Cafe, which provides tester models for customers to use at their
tables. "With no smoke, the stone is much nicer; you're not coughing."
It also suits Toronto's no-smoking bylaw nicely.

Vaporizers work by heating marijuana leaves to a temperature just
below combustion, vaporizing the crystals, which can then be inhaled
at the user's leisure.

Ms. Roach says her store sells an average of about two a day, in a
variety of models ranging in price from $90 to $750. "By next summer,
there are probably going to be 100 different types of vaporizers that
you can buy," she says.

And they've just received a sizable boost in credibility from a recent
study at the University of California at San Francisco, which finds
that this is a significantly safer way of getting high. "THC is the
main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and vaporization delivered
the same amount of THC into the bloodstream as smoking," says Donald
Abrams, the lead author of the UCSF study. But that high, he says,
didn't come with the toxic chemicals usually found in smoke.

There's an interesting legal possibility attached to vaporizers as
well. According to Sergeant Mark Hayward, from the community response
unit of Toronto Police's 52 Division, the residue of a vaporized high
might not be enough to bring possession charges.

Though the issue has never been tried, what's left in the vaporizer
might be indistinguishable from hemp, which is totally legal.

"All the drugs we seize for charges have to be tested by federal drug
labs," he says, "so if the THC wasn't there, no. It's the chemical
breakdown that would make it make it illegal."

But, he adds, there may be THC residue in the equipment, in which
case, everyone around the table would be liable for possession
charges. Though there's no word yet on any self-cleaning vaporizer
making its way to market, it may only be a matter of time before the
courts will be forced to revisit Canada's drug laws.