Pubdate: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU) Copyright: 2003 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc. Contact: http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274 Author: Henry Aubin Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) CITY SHOULD GET JUMP ON POT CAFES As it turns out, Montreal's first cannabis cafe will not open on Oct. 1, as scheduled. The cafe owner had planned to sublet space in a building on St. Denis St., but on the weekend the landlord said he wouldn't allow it. Still, the idea has an air of inevitability. In Vancouver, Toronto, London, Ont., and Saint John, N.B., entrepreneurs have already exploited the ambiguity in Canada's drug laws by opening such coffeehouses. The businessperson behind the abortive effort on St. Denis St., Marc-Boris St. Maurice, says he's already scouting for a new location. And that might be just the first of many. When I suggested in jest yesterday that his pot cafes might become as common as Tim Hortons, he replied seriously, "Maybe one day." Patrons would be able to bring their own pot for personal use - and buy a coffee or perhaps a marijuana-laced muffin or brownie. Yesterday, Montreal police said they'd arrest smokers at such a cafe. Judges in some other provinces have ruled that possession of small amounts of cannabis is not a crime, but police here are not recognizing these non-Quebec judgments. However, St. Maurice says he is confident that a Quebec court will soon reach a similar decision. Let's assume that, like it or not, these establishments will spring up in large numbers. Before this wave reaches Montreal, let's focus on just one aspect of it - its potential effect on kids. Everyone on all sides of the contentious issue of pot can probably agree on one thing: that it's not a great idea for adolescents to get into the toking-up habit. The teen and pre-teen years are when you need to deal with reality, find out what you're good at and get some sort of direction for your life. For that, I bet even the Bloc Pot and Marijuana Party, which were behind the St. Denis St. venture, would concede that cannabis is unhelpful. Federal Justice Minister Martin Cauchon and other advocates of the banalization of marijuana have never seriously addressed the question of minimizing pot's accessibility to youth. Nor have municipal authorities. The location of St. Maurice's would-be shop illuminates this sad hole in society's consciousness. The St. Denis St. cafe was to have been in the basement of a building just south of Sherbrooke St. One floor above was a skateboard shop frequented by adolescents. If the scheme has fallen through for the moment, it isn't because public officials had late-breaking qualms. No, it's because a building owner happened to have a conscience. There are two ways the Tremblay administration can play this. The first is the manner in which, decades ago, the Drapeau administration responded to an earlier trend - topless bars. They sprang up everywhere. One on Gouin Blvd., for example, was right around the corner from a leafy residential street. From their porch, homeowners could watch a 10-foot babe in all her blinking neon glory. Finally, city hall responded. It adopted a policy that all new topless joints had to be in a very few well-defined parts of the city, none of which abutted residential areas. But this was very late. Many places had "grandfathered" rights to stay. Later, city hall also took tardy action when arcades multiplied across Montreal. The Tremblay administration can follow suit, doing nothing and keeping its fingers crossed that the courts in Quebec will make it hard for pot-cafes to come to Montreal. Or, it can get ready and adopt a zoning policy that confines all such future establishments to neighbourhoods far from places where adolescents congregate, including schools. Even under Cauchon's proposed law to decriminalize marijuana, the trafficking of pot would be criminal. Organized crime would still be in charge, and its minions would be swarming near such coffeehouses (since these establishments themselves could not sell cannabis). Gangs are already common enough. We don't need to intensify their presence in places that our kids can hardly avoid. It's pathetic that about the only rampart left for the control of cannabis is municipal zoning. Let's at least make the best of it. - --- MAP posted-by: Josh