Pubdate: Sat, 27 Jul 2013
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2013 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Margaret Wente
Page: F2

WHAT'S JUSTIN TRUDEAU BEEN SMOKING?

Don't get me wrong, it's ludicrous to arrest people for possession.
But let's not pretend legalization will keep it out of kids' hands

I'm not overly invested in the marijuana debate. My friends and I all
smoked pot when we were young, but hardly any of us bother any more.
In my circle, the drugs of choice are martinis and Chardonnay.
Frankly, we consider stoners declasse.

That doesn't mean pot laws are of no concern to the upper middle
class. Quite a lot of parents I know have been forced to shell out
$10,000 or $15,000 to make sure their kid didn't acquire a criminal
record simply for having a joint in his pocket. Less affluent kids are
less likely to get off the hook, so clearly there's a social justice
issue here.

Which brings us to Justin Trudeau, who struck a bold blow for social
justice this week when he declared that it's time to stop stalling and
legalize pot once and for all. It's a position most Canadians agree
with, so it's not bad politics. At last - a bright line in the sand
between the forces of enlightened common sense, as embodied by the
younger generation (Mr. Trudeau), and the forces of ignorance and
repression, embodied by out-of-touch, old white Conservatives! Is
there any doubt whose side you'd rather be on?

Well, there might just be a little doubt. The battle over pot is a
classic culture war, generating a lot of heat and very little light,
with plenty of myth and misinformation on both sides. Legalizing
marijuana wouldn't be the road to moral ruin. But it wouldn't solve
all our problems either.

Like a lot of people, Mr. Trudeau seems to think that once we legalize
marijuana, everything will be the same, but without arrests. In fact,
he says our kids will be even safer. "Tax it. Regulate it," he said
this week. "It's one of the only ways to keep it out of the hands of
our kids."

Fat chance. Simple logic says he's wrong. When people want something
and you make it easier to get, demand generally goes up. Especially if
the price goes down. And the price of legal marijuana would go way
down. It would likely be the cheapest high on a per-hour basis of all
the common drugs, including beer - even if it's heavily taxed. That's
because marijuana is ridiculously inexpensive to produce. It could
probably be grown on a commercial basis for less than $25 a pound.
That's less than 1 per cent of the current street price (about $200 an
ounce in Vancouver, according to www.PriceofWeed.com ).

I'm not trying to be snarky. I'm just pointing out the facts. On the
whole, marijuana isn't very dangerous, and arresting people for
possession is ludicrous. But Mr. Trudeau must be smoking something if
he thinks legalizing pot would decrease consumption. Of course it
wouldn't! Legalizing alcohol didn't decrease consumption either.

In fact, the evidence, such as it is, suggests that legalization would
likely double or triple marijuana use. That doesn't mean we shouldn't
do it. We just shouldn't kid ourselves.

It's hard to find experts who are objective about drug policy,
especially in Canada, where the conversation has been hopelessly
polarized between the law-and-order crowd and the legalize-everything
gang (very popular in B.C.).

The most trustworthy source I've found is Mark Kleiman, professor of 
public policy at the UCLA School of Public Affairs and a lifelong 
student of drug policy. The facts I cite here are drawn from a valuable 
book he co-authored, Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to 
Know. Mr. Kleiman is the newly appointed pot czar of the state of 
Washington, which recently voted to legalize marijuana. His job is to 
help Washingtonians do it well, not stupidly, and to learn as they go.

Ask Mr. Kleiman for a cost-benefit analysis of legalizing pot, and
he'll say it all depends. "Any honest assessment of the situation
needs to acknowledge uncertainty," he wrote recently. That's because,
contrary to popular belief, "there is currently no legal commercial
(non-medical) production and distribution system for marijuana
anywhere in the world."

Mr. Kleiman busts some other myths held dear by legalizers. For one,
the revenues from taxing pot wouldn't be all that great, because even
with a big increase in demand, marijuana is not that big a business.
Nor would legalization in the U.S. drive the Mexican drug cartels out
of business. That's because pot doesn't account for very much of their
business, maybe 20 per cent. The real money's in hard drugs. The
number of young men in jail would definitely go down - especially in
the United States, which has been far harsher than Canada on drug
crime. But the number of young adult potheads would definitely go up.

Mr. Kleiman warns that business interests would certainly try to
hijack the industry, just as they have with alcohol. He points out
that in California, the medical marijuana business is an open joke -
anyone can get a prescription from certain doctors, and most of them
aren't sick. Meantime, the widely touted medical benefits of cannabis
are still unproven, partly because governments have blocked proper
scientific testing. There would, of course, be lots of immediate
benefits to legalization. Police officers would have to find something
else to do. Defence lawyers would have to turn in their Porsches. But
before we rush into this, maybe we should watch and learn from the
experiment in Washington.

"We have to use evidence and science to make sure we're moving
forward," Mr. Trudeau said the other day. I agree. Now if only he
would follow his own advice.
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MAP posted-by: Matt