Pubdate: Mon, 07 Mar 2005
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Pete McMartin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

RCMP DEATHS SPARK CONFUSED DEBATE OVER POT ISSUE

In my life, I've inhaled. I'm betting most of us have, if my experiences in 
high school, university, work and every neighbourhood I have ever lived in 
are any indication. Pot was ubiquitous 30 years ago: it is ubiquitous now.

Does that make me complicit in the tragic death of four RCMP officers in 
Mayerthorpe, Alta.? Does it make anyone who has ever smoked or still smokes 
pot complicit in their deaths?

Uncomfortable questions. But in the superheated and often overwrought 
coverage of the four officers' deaths, linkages are being made that beg 
answers.

Suddenly, the guilt of the officers' needless deaths has spread beyond the 
actions of a lone psychopath and fanned out, by inference, to the millions 
of illicit drug users in this country. Are they, we, ultimately, the guilty 
party? Is anyone who has ever had a toke involved? Did James Roszko embody 
our collective lawlessness or was he merely an unfortunate singular 
eventuality?

Many took the opportunity to expound on both suggestions. With the RCMP 
officers' deaths still fresh, and with the facts still vague, various 
eminences at the Liberal party convention offered up the whole spectrum of 
strategies, from calling for the complete legalization of marijuana, to a 
further decriminalization of marijuana, to mandatory prison sentences for 
operating a grow-op, to a renewed effort of the war on drugs and a 
zero-tolerance approach.

Letters to the editor pages mirrored that confusion. One letter in our 
sister paper, The Province, argued the four officers would not be dead if 
pot were legal: another argued pot played only a marginal part in the 
killings: a third argued drugs are "the front end of terrorism" -- making, 
in a single bound, the leap between Mayerthorpe and al-Qaida. The same 
dichotomy can be found in today's Sun, with one letter writer calling for 
stiffer sentences for grow-ops, likening them to a "disease," while 
another, decrying the senselessness of the officers' deaths, called for an 
end to marijuana prohibition. Remove the law: remove the problem.

In Saturday's paper, Sun editorial cartoonist Roy Peterson -- the nation's 
best and most decorated at his job -- suggested in his editorial-page 
cartoon that pot smokers were complicit, with a cartoon of a youngish, 
toque-hatted dopehead toking on a doobie, and saying "Smoking cigarettes 
can kill you or me. Smoking pot kills cops and criminals but not me." The 
headline above it was "Customer Denial 101."

Peterson, who has never smoked pot, was right in one sense: There is a 
whole lot of denial and avoidance going on. He was wrong in another. His 
image of pot-users as feckless low-life slackers is out of touch.

Pot is firmly entrenched in the middle and upper-middle classes. It is not 
exclusive to the marginalized or to the young. This is a country of several 
million polite, tax-paying criminals. For all the talk about terrorist 
groups and export, grow-ops serve a primarily domestic audience. They meet 
a consumer demand, which seems to be forgotten in the call for stiffer 
sentences.

Oddly, the killings in Mayerthorpe had only a peripheral connection to 
grow-ops. Even the Mayerthorpe RCMP, as its media relations officer told me 
on Sunday, did not consider this a raid on a grow-op: it was a retrieval 
operation of stolen property. They stumbled on James Roszko's grow-op, just 
as they stumbled on his psychopathic anger. His grow-op wasn't much to 
boast about, either: Twenty mature plants and 280 "others" -- seedlings, 
perhaps -- is nothing in the marijuana industry, not when B.C. has seen 
seizures in the range of 20,000 plants. James Roszko wasn't a problem 
because he grew pot: He was a problem because he was nuts.

At any rate, the corrosive effects of grow-ops manifest themselves in ways 
other than violence. The majority of raids do not result in shoot-outs. But 
grow-ops are fire hazards; they steal power in huge quantities; they ruin 
property; they bankroll gang life and gun-running and all manner of illegal 
activities. And they put police in harm's way.

And here's the thing about that:

All us nice, tax-paying criminals who have ever smoked pot in our lives, or 
who casually take a toke at a party if offered, know this.

We would feel differently, of course, if the grow-op was next door to our 
house. But the odds are, it's not. It is somebody else's problem. We live 
with that fact, and in this, we are complicit, and we are guilty of 
avoidance, and Peterson is right.

On the other hand, the prohibitionists and those who call for stiffer 
sentences against grow-ops suffer an avoidance of their own, namely, 
grow-ops serve a huge market. That market lives next door, and is made up 
of neighbours who, having seen the havoc that alcohol and tobacco have 
legally wreaked on society, don't see pot use in the same alarmist 
perspective they do. Those neighbours would charge the prohibitionists -- 
who probably don't mind having a drink and or smoke -- with being guilty of 
hypocrisy.

But then, terminology is everything, isn't it? Some will always see it as a 
war on drugs, when that is only half the equation.

This is a civil war.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth