CONTROLS ON MARIJUANA SHOULD CONSIDER HAZARDS

Whatever the Canadian government decides to do about the legal status of
marijuana, it should do so without worrying about what the U.S. government
thinks.

The U.S. war on drugs has been a disaster - at best a war on the sick and
the poor; at worst a huge waste of billions of dollars in law enforcement
resources. Canada should follow the lead of more enlightened democracies in
Europe and realize that marijuana is first and foremost a public health
issue. Indeed that's the case with all psychoactive recreational drugs,
including alcohol.

In deciding what controls to place on these substances, the government
first ought to assess the hazards. Contrary to the ramblings of potheads,
excessive marijuana use harms lungs and short-term memory. Marijuana also
impairs one's ability to operate a motor-vehicle or a boat. As with
alcohol, pot also interferes with good judgment in other ways, such as
increasing the chance of the user engaging in unprotected sex with a stranger.

As history shows, measures to control recreational drugs, however, have
never involved any assessment of their actual impact on people. Use of a
recreational drug - from cocaine, to LSD, to cannabis, to magic mushrooms -
has always started in legal obscurity; only to be made illegal when the
drug becomes popular.

Such bans have merely allowed lawmakers to avoid looking into the causes
and effects of drug use and how they can be altered. The bans haven't even
been effective at reducing the drug use - as became apparent during
experiments with alcohol prohibition.

One consequence of Prohibition was the explosion of organized crime to fill
the demand for liquor.

Marijuana prohibition has lasted far longer than alcohol prohibition. One
consequence has been the jailing of millions of people for smoking a herb.
Another more recent phenomenon has been the destruction of thousands of
homes converted into grow-operations.

Such a large majority of Canadian adults - including the federal health
minister - have tried marijuana that it's obvious its illegal status has
done nothing to curtail its use.

Indeed, a lawyer of our acquaintance believes that making such drugs
illegal created the black markets that resulted in their proliferation.
That the drugs are seen as forbidden fruit by impressionable youth helped
it along, too. Like the health minister and Ringo Starr, most mature people
don't smoke it no more.

The smoke is long out of the bottle, though, and just declaring marijuana
legal without any controls won't stuff the problem back in.

Basically, marijuana should have the same controls as alcohol and tobacco,
since it has many of the same qualities as each - if it is less addictive
than either.

We don't condone someone igniting a fattie in a restaurant any more than
we'd enjoy second-hand stogey smoke. We don't want stoners endangering our
highways. And we don't want the impressionable brains of children getting
bent on pot. Adults should be free to make themselves stupid, so long as
they don't harm others.

Canada can become a model for the world, if not the U.S., if it keeps those
ideas in mind as it designs a sensible marijuana strategy.