Pubdate: Sat, 17 Mar 2007
Source: Chronicle-Journal, The (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007 The Chronicle-Journal
Contact: http://tricubemedia.net/tbayemail/letters.php
Website: http://www.chroniclejournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3155
Author: Harry Bruce

NO BUSINESS LIKE MARIJUANA

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 grow-ops 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% 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 percent 
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.
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