HIGH TIME FOR LAW CHANGE

Criminalizing Pot Smokers Has Been A Costly And Hypocritical
Waste

It's been 18 years and a bit since I stopped smoking
dope.

I quit on Oct. 21, 1984, the day I flushed hundreds of dollars of very
high quality marijuana and cocaine down the toilet and turned my life
over to Jesus Christ.

But that's another story.

Prior to that life-transforming day, drugs were a large part of my
life. Indeed, drugs were a daily part of my life.

I first smoked marijuana when I was 14 while still an elite athlete
and Canadian record holder in several swimming events.

But it wasn't until I quit swimming in late 1979 after the boycott of
the 1980 Moscow Olympics that I turned to drugs with the same kind of
gusto I put into training.

In other words, like most things I do, I did drugs wholeheartedly. I
became a cannabis connoisseur -- a ganja gourmet, if you will -- and
somewhat of a smoking snob.

Being from Vancouver and accustomed to smoking only buds -- or the
flowers of marijuana, grown by some true horticultural geniuses, I
would sniff in derision at the offerings of some pot peasant from
Ontario with their bag of twiggy, seedy dried out leaf.

In contrast, the stuff my friends and I smoked was EXTREMELY potent
and pungent. It was so packed with the active ingredient THC, that one
or two puffs of the stuff would be enough for a buzz and a whole joint
would practically guarantee that you wouldn't be going any place --
let alone moving -- for the next 20 minutes.

Which is why I was rather shocked when the Common's committee on the
non-medical use of drugs released its report Thursday recommending
that possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana be considered simple
possession. After all, 30 grams of the stuff I used to smoke could
incapacitate 200 people. But I suppose, 30 grams of the Ontario stuff
would barely get one person stoned.

Needless to say, I am no longer a user or a fan of illicit drugs. I
have too many friends who have ruined once very promising lives with
drugs (other than marijuana) and I am so glad, and grateful to God,
that I only partook for five years and then went on to really
experience and enjoy life.

However, when I heard that the committee recommended that marijuana be
decriminalized and read that our former tokin' Justice Minister Martin
Cauchon plans to implement that recommendation sometime in the new
year, I was pleased.

Criminalizing pot smokers has been a costly waste of police and court
resources, not to mention hypocritical, since many of us have met cops
who smoke marijuana themselves.

It's believed that some $1.5 billion will be saved as a result of
decriminalization. That's not including the money the government will
be raking in on fines of those 200,000 people annually caught with
less than 30 grams of pot.

But the main reason I'm most happy is for the sick and dying people I
know who use marijuana as medicine.

People like Grant Krieger -- Calgary's foremost medicinal marijuana
minstrel -- who has been relentlessly pursued and prosecuted by police
simply for trying to provide himself and other multiple sclerosis
sufferers like him with the only medicine they say works.

Even though the whole issue of medicinal marijuana was not dealt with
in this report, it's only reasonable to assume that sick people with
an exemption to possess marijuana will now be cut some further slack
if they are found carrying more than 30 grams or have more than a few
plants growing in their home.

I now truly believe that marijuana is a miracle drug and was put on
this planet not to make suburban kids high but to alleviate many
serious ills.

Krieger was turned on to marijuana after he attempted suicide when the
spasms and pain of his multiple sclerosis -- not to mention his
incapacity to move -- became too much.

He tried marijuana -- something he once thought was bad and "only for
lowlifes" and within a couple of weeks, not only had his spasms
stopped, but he regained his ability to move, he folded up his
wheelchair and has been a tireless cannabis crusader ever since.

While marijuana will remain illegal under the new law expected in
January, it's my hope that parliament will establish a new committee
to deal with medical marijuana and that sooner rather than later, real
medical trials will take place that will make it possible for sick
people to get reliable and safe supplies of marijuana from a pharmacy.

Multi-national pharmaceutical companies don't like the idea for
obvious reasons, but I have met more than a dozen straight-laced, law
abiding citizens who swear that the pharmaceuticals they took for a
variety of ills -- including MS, chronic pain from car accidents,
nausea from chemotherapy, or the pain of glaucoma -- were expensive,
had terrible side effects and weren't particularly effective anyway.

This committee should have made wide-sweeping recommendations to deal
with the sick and dying first and then with recreational users next.

Nevertheless, this report and this government's vow to decriminalize
this relatively benign recreational plant and miracle medicine is one
of the only good things the Jean Chretien government has done to date.

It's not much of a legacy.

But without it, the rest pretty much goes up in smoke.

This report will not change my life one bit. But it is the right thing
to do. I'll gladly take that.