HARPER REVEALS HIMSELF AS A STICK IN THE MUD

Sometimes, it's hard to get a reading on someone, especially in politics.

Years ago, a youngish guy named Pierre Trudeau burst onto the scene. He
forced another youngish, more handsome politician named John Turner to put
aside his ambitions and assume the role of Liberal crown prince.

Back then, I was a fan of Trudeau - his intellect, his cool had a instant
magnetic appeal. His strength, standing up to St-Jean-Baptiste Day rioters
and scornfully telling a reporter, "Just watch me!" after Quebec terrorists
had murdered Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte was irresistible.

On the other hand, I couldn't quite get a handle on young Turner until one
day listening to him it was suddenly very clear, to me at least: he was a
stuffed shirt. Starched, stiff, not very comfortable. And so, about 20
years later when he got his shot at leading Canada, he came across to me as
just as stiff and uncomfortable.

I don't think I am the only Canadian who's been looking at Stephen Harper
and trying to figure him out recently. Unlike some impatient colleagues, I
didn't think it was essential for him to devote his summer to glad-handing
at picnics. Paul Martin did just that and what he stands for is still a
mystery to me.

Then, last week, suddenly, the real Harper appeared. It was not the vision
I was hoping for. He was revealed, to my eyes at least, as a geezer, a
royal stick in the mud, the kind of guy who would never get in trouble at a
Christmas office party and never understand anyone who did.

What prompts this dour assessment you ask? Last week, Harper lamented the
recommendation of a Senate committee that Canada legalize marijuana.

Harper said he rejected the committee's contention that marijuana was less
harmful than alcohol and even went so far as to say he'd rather his two
kids try alcohol some day. In "moderation" only of course.

Gee, in France a whole nation is raised on red wine but Monsieur Harper
allows as how he might just countenance his kids when they grow up sipping
vino, a little but not, God forbid, taking a drag on a joint.

Was Harper terrified by Health Minister Anne McLellan's recent and silly
warning that marijuana should not even be used by pain-racked,
terminally-ill patients until her lab-coated minions had spent a few years
checking it out?

No. He's just naturally cautious. Except in this case, it's ludicrous as
policy and ludicrous as politics.

Take the politics. Over half the population has used marijuana. Way over
half if everyone really fessed up. A Globe and Mail e-mail survey of 15,000
the day after the senators' announcement showed four out of five
respondents wanted to decriminalize this benign drug. The folks with the
munchies are the majority.

As policy, insisting marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol would lead to
ludicrous government.

We don't read about all the potheads and their families wiped out on the
Labour Day weekend in tragic marijuana-related highway smash-ups do we?

You don't see huge, ugly family breakdown statistics because of pot. We
don't set up checkpoints at Christmas to catch potheads on the road, do we?

It's just not the kind of drug that leads to outrageous, dangerous
behaviour routinely, as alcohol does, routinely.

In Amsterdam, where pot is legal and you can buy and smoke it in cafes
(yes, councillor Bolstad, they smoke in cafes!), use of the drug is lower
than here where such use could earn a ticket from Bylaw Enforcement, not to
mention a criminal record from the real cops.

It's marijuana that finances gangs and drug dealing in our cities, and
diverts billions of our law enforcement dollars. It could happen with
alcohol but only if we criminalize it again. Enter prohibitionist Stephen
Harper, yes, looking rather like one of Eliot Ness's clean-cut
"Untouchables." And yes, with this idiotic stand Harper will become
politically untouchable, a youngish geezer in the eyes of most Canadians,
one who will never move from Stornoway to 24 Sussex.