LEGALIZED MARIJUANA IS LONG OVERDUE

The Costly Effort To Control It Has Been Lost. Let's Tax It, Sell It
At Legal Outlets And Reinvest The Cash

British Columbia is fast becoming the only province in Canada where
the biggest industry is illegal.

In 2005, forestry ($10 million) was B.C.'s top economic driver and
construction ($7.9 billion) ranked second. But what was this, coming
up fast on the inside to move into third place? The marijuana
industry. Puff, puff.

With annual sales of $7.5 billion, it was worth more than the combined
total of hotels and restaurants ($3.8 billion) and mining, oil and gas
($3.5 billion). Construction is booming as never before in B.C., but
that won't stop the pot trade from steaming into second spot. After
that, forestry industry, watch your behind.

"The amount of marijuana produced each year in British Columbia," said
a 2005 study by the University College of Fraser Valley, "is estimated
to have increased from 19,729 kilos in 1997 to 79,817 in 2003."

Is this a growth industry or what?

Like the best above board businesses, the marijuana racket constantly
improves its equipment and distribution. It invests in sophisticated
technology and achieves more and more economies of scale. Between 1997
and 2003, the average amount of harvested marijuana B.C. police got
per seizure shot from 2.4 to 7.2 kilos.

As far back as 2000, reported Stephen Easton, an economics professor
at Simon Fraser University, the province already had roughly 17,500
"grow-ops." Since then, heaven only knows how many more have taken
over recreation rooms, garages, and whole houses in which the window
curtains and blinds are forever drawn.

Some say Beautiful British Columbia is the happy home of 100,000
marijuana growers and police claim that so many tens of thousands have
set up grow-ops -- to supplement wages and pay off mortgages -- that
the business has become nothing less than an epidemic.

Far more lucrative than tending roses, watching birds, running
tabletop railroads or building tree houses, growing and selling
marijuana is the hobby of choice for youngish couples throughout much
of the province.

"They're just regular, entrepreneurial Joes and Janes with good jobs,
eager to supplement their income to make a decent living," BCBusiness
reports. "Most of their operations consist of just two or three lights
and a handful of plants, which don't suck enough electricity to
trigger alarm bells at BC Hydro."

Yet many couples are so greedy, they put their own children at risk.
After remarking on the weapons, booby traps, explosives, and chemical
products that grow-ops often house, the study by the University
College of Fraser Valley said, "The likelihood of a marijuana grow
operation resulting in fire was 24 times higher than for ordinary
house fires. The hazards are of particular concern considering
indications that children were present in 21 per cent of indoor grow
operations."

The Joes and Janes are bit players.

All over the world, B.C. pot enjoys brand recognition as "gourmet
weed," and it's not them but organized crime that sells the stuff for
billions on international markets.

Moreover, says RCMP Superintendent Paul Nadeau, "We think they're
exporting their expertise. We've heard of it on an international scale."

"A different kind of brain drain is under way in B.C.," the Vancouver
Province reports, "as pot growers share their billions of dollars'
worth of skills with a worldwide audience."

Ah, yes, distance education. It's a wonderful thing.

In B.C., marijuana is an ineradicable fact of life. Eighty per cent of
19- to 24-year-old Vancouverites have tried it at least once and Dr.
Cameron Duff of Vancouver Coastal Health says, "What's really ironic
is that we have more people reporting cannabis use than tobacco use."

So it's past time we legalized the stuff and not only in
B.C.

"If we treat marijuana like any other commodity," Easton argues, "we
can tax it, regulate it and use the resources the industry generates,
rather than continue a war against consumption and production that has
long since been lost ... We are reliving the experience of alcohol
Prohibition of the early years of the last century."

Let's force the crooks out of business.

Let's take the hundreds of millions we'll save by abandoning futile
enforcement efforts, plus the billions we'll gain by taxing pot sales
at legal outlets and invest all this new money into reducing global
warming, improving health care, helping the homeless, or making life
worth living for aboriginal children.

Let's put the dough where it will do some good.