A MARIJUANA WAR WORTH WINNING

Mixed feelings surround marijuana and its many cultivators these days. Yes,
pot is still illegal for recreational purposes, but as a pain-killer in
certain medical conditions, there is no better remedy. It has been hailed
as something just short of miraculous. Hence the rehabilitation of pot's
reputation and status.

So intense has been the lobbying on its behalf that even the federal
government is into the pot cultivating and selling act. Last year it began
harvesting the first experimental hydroponic crop from a lab located deep
in an abandoned Flin Flon, Man., mine-shaft. When the security chiefs
figure out how to do it without it being diverted, the crop will be sent
out in manageable batches to the 600 or so Canadians who have qualified to
smoke it.

That's why today's news of another huge marijuana bust jointly carried out
by Guelph Police and Ontario Provincial Police drug units is likely to be
met with some ambivalence and with as much sympathy for the farmers as for
the cops.

It shouldn't. There should be absolutely no ambivalence in this instance.
The cops may seem to have a wide choice of which particular growing
operation they're going to break into this week -- growers (and users) are
that prolific -- but the reality is that these operations deserve to be
busted, and busted quickly.

They deserve to be shut down not just because they're illegal, and their
product probably as harmful as tobacco to healthy lungs. They deserve to be
broken up because they're highly dangerous and because they usually involve
the blatant theft of huge quantities of hydro-electric energy. It has been
estimated that Waterloo Region and Guelph utility companies alone are being
hit for $2 million a year -- and that's not peanuts. It represents a lot of
illegal growing operations (and a lot more pot-buyers and smokers). But it
also represents a scam that threatens to boost customer power bills to
astronomical heights.

From that angle alone, pot-growing operations deserve nobody's support.
Their bust-ups warrant nobody's tears. When the dangers of fire in the
super-lit, super-heated houses that now typically contain growing
operations are considered, there is good reason to support police efforts
in shutting them down.

Shutting them down may seem simple enough, of course. Almost every week
brings another area police bulletin announcing another bust and more
arrests. But the fact is that new illegal growing operations are being
brought on stream every week -- and they're making big money at the expense
of almost everybody else. If there's one thing you can count on when
there's big money at stake, it's that what's involved are not just innocent
but misguided entrepreneurs trying to taking advantage of a niche market
item. What is likely lurking in the background is a much larger and
greedier criminal organization.