IT'S LONG PAST TIME WE LEGALIZED IT

BRITISH COLUMBIA is fast becoming the only province in Canada in
which 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 now booms 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 number of kilos of harvested marijuana
that B. C. police managed to seize 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 growops 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, however, 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," Professor 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 in 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.