WHY, NOT HOW

Federal bureaucrats responsible for a marijuana-grow operation in an
abandoned Flin Flon mine believe they might now have two sources of good
weed. That's a big maybe.

Anyone sick enough to hold a federal licence allowing them to personally
use pot to ease their symptoms or chronic pain should not heave a sigh of
relief.

Help is not on its way; the strains accepted as pure and useful must now
undergo clinical trials.

All of this -- all this time and extraordinary expense, both in money and
unrelieved human suffering -- to control a plant, the use of which is less
harmful than the use of alcohol and tobacco.

Ottawa convinced itself it alone could build better marijuana after an
Ontario court ordered it to change the law on use of medical marijuana or
see it struck down as unconstitutional. The decision was backed by reams of
expert opinion which have, over time, painted marijuana not only as a
beneficial medicine but also as an benign recreational drug. A number of
bodies have questioned the fairness and usefulness of pot's
criminalization. Most recently, a Senate committee concluded: Marijuana
carries no serious threat of dependence to users; pot is not a so-called
"gateway" drug that leads to harder substances; and there are few,
undetermined health risks. Marijuana does, however, show promise for use
for relief of pain and symptoms for people suffering with terminal sickness
or other illnesses, such as AIDS and multiple sclerosis.

Canada has long batted around the logic of keeping this relatively harmless
drug illegal.

Its decision to control sick people's access to marijuana has only
prolonged their suffering.

A more reasonable solution would have freed sick people to continue to find
their own supplier of dependable weed, but that would have meant giving
tacit sanction to growers producing an illegal substance. In an attempt to
defend a law increasingly indefensible, the federal government is setting
sick people up for protracted suffering made worse by a faint hope they may
get access to the official inventory before disease wins out.

Marijuana laws result in convictions of thousands each year for reasons
that long ago ceased to make sense.

Until pot possession laws, in the very least, are liberalized, the sick
will continue to suffer and recreational users will buy from risky
suppliers and be penalized for enjoying a substance less harmful than
tobacco and alcohol, which are regulated and widely available.

Canada should stop musing on the "whys" of decriminalizing or legalizing
pot, and focus on the "hows".