'DOOBIE BROTHERS' KEEP ON SMOKIN'

Tucker, Baldasaro Oppose Growers Stealing Hydro But Still Want
Marijuana Legalized

The Reverend Walter Tucker glances idly at a blue plume of pot smoke
that's slowly spiralling to the ceiling in Danny's Barber Shop on
Ainslie Street.

"This is marijuana we're talking about - hardly grounds for a police
state," he says.

Tucker is commenting on never-ending merry-go-round between police
and pot growers. There seems no end to these homegrow operations.

His constant sidekick, Michael Baldasaro gets reflective while
savouring his doobie.

"If they're stealing hydro, that's theft," Baldasaro answers easily.
"But when it comes to the marijuana thing, that's different."

Legalize the weed and few will feel compelled to steal electricity.
Instead of busts, the state will be collecting thousands in taxes
from the growers, he adds.

"There shouldn't be a law against this," Tucker agrees, sucking long
and slow in a contented, agreeable voice. "We're chasing drug addicts
with police instead of with doctors.

Tucker, 67, is the older of the two "Doobie Brothers" - the Pied
Pipers of Pot - whose crusade for legalized marijuana has pulled them
on the political path in recent years.

In the last five years, Tucker has acted as campaign manager for the
52-year-old Baldasaro in two Hamilton elections, finishing fifth
among 12 candidates for mayor and fifth out out of nine when he
challenged Sheila Copps in Hamilton East during the federal election
in November 2000. Baldasaro has also vied - most would say comical -
for the leadership of the federal PCs and the Canadian Alliance -
always on a platform of pot reform.

The two are spinning tales from the barber's chair on this day with
their friend Danny (The Barber) Katsorov, proud owner of an
establishment that ranks among the freest bastions of free speech in
the region.

Danny just smiles and chops away at hair, politely declining the
minister's offer of a puff of nirvana.

Despite hiding behind the cloak of the Church of the Universe they
formed to celebrate their smoky "sacrament of life," Tucker and
Baldasaro have been on the receiving end of innumerable pot busts
over the years, most recently two years ago, when they were stung for
sending seven joints through the mail to unamused health minister
Allan Rock.

In 1999, Health Canada had launched a $7.5-million inquiry into the
medicinal effects of marijuana. Rock, though, really caught their
interest when he told reporters that the government needed to find a
source of marijuana for the study.

So the two sultans of smoke jumped to his aid, sending him several
grams of weed in a baggy.

When Health Canada reported that the baggy had gone AWOL, the
brothers of blow snail-mailed another sample, seven tightly rolled
"sacraments" in a Tree of Life pouch.

Soon afterward their Barton Street, Hamilton, digs were visited by an
RCMP undercover cop.

"I knew he was an undercover cop as soon as I saw him," Tucker
recalls. "Even said to him, 'You a narc?'

"He was dressed in jammies and carried a big wad of 20s. 'I need some
joints,' he says and starts peeling off bills. 'Give me as many as
you've got.'

"I told him later he could've ridden up on a horse wearing his
Mountie hat and I would have done the same damn thing - sign him up,
register him with the church and sell him some sacrament. No need for
all this undignified stuff."

That bust resulted in a suspended sentence.

"They pretty much leave us alone now. We have an open door. Everyone
in Hamilton knows it. No one hassles us," Tucker says.

As Prestonites who wanted them evicted from the community remember,
the pair of weed-happy eccentrics lived for nine months in a trailer
home outside of the old Kanmet foundry until a mysterious fire in
September 1998 burned them out of here.

During the chaos of the fire investigation, their Church of the
Universe flag, featuring the prickly green leaves of a cannabis
plant, was swiped and their metal flag pole was cut down.

"Someone did this with all those cops and firemen standing around,"
clucks Baldasaro. "So we keep coming back every now and then to see
if we can recover it."

The two men with the ZZ Top beards say they loved their nine months here.

"A great place to retire," says Tucker.

"We discovered the Y," Baldasaro says.

"Getting skinny," Tucker nods.

"Liked it so much we stayed with the Y in Hamilton," says Baldasaro.

But Brother Tucker seeks the comfort of God and lights another
twister. He's got politics on his brain.

"We haven't got a health system. We haven't got a school system. But
we sure got a good police system."