Pubdate: Fri, 20 Dec 2013
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2013 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Chris Selley

CANADA'S WEIRD POT DEBATE

In a recent Conservative radio advertisement, a mother frets that 
legalizing and regulating marijuana, as Liberal leader Justin Trudeau 
proposes, would send "the message that recreational drug use is OK." 
"That's the last thing I want my kids to think!" she exclaims. "And 
making it easier for my kids to get? It doesn't sound like Justin 
Trudeau has the kind of judgment we need in a prime minister."

It echoes Stephen Harper's take on the issue, last expressed in a 
letter to the people of Brandon-Souris during the recent byelection 
campaign. Mr. Trudeau's "plan to legalize marijuana will make it more 
accessible to our kids and encourage recreational drug use," he wrote 
- - which is, he added, "the wrong message to send to our children."

It is all quite dumb. If legality necessarily equals increased 
accessibility, societal approval and increased consumption, you would 
expect Canada to do better at keeping marijuana out of the hands of 
children than alcohol and tobacco. The opposite is true: UNICEF's 
survey of child well-being in wealthy countries finds us in third 
place on smoking, 18th place on alcohol and 29th place - last - on marijuana.

It's strange that the Liberals aren't hammering the Tories on that 
very point. A recent radio ad vaguely alleges that "in the past seven 
years of Stephen Harper and his Conservative government, our 
community has been flooded with marijuana," and argues regulation 
would do the opposite of what the Conservatives claim - i.e., "keep 
it out of the hands of our kids and striking back at the criminals 
and gangs who distribute it."

But it doesn't seem like anything that would knock the timid or the 
socially conservative out of their comfort zone (pot's bad, so it 
should be illegal) and into problem-solving mode: Pot's bad, kids 
have easy access to it even though it's illegal ... or maybe even 
partly because it's illegal. That's the journey Justin Trudeau needs 
to take people on if legalization is going to be an asset more than a 
liability.

Vancouver journalist Justin McElroy crunched the numbers from the 
recently failed attempt to force a referendum on decriminalization in 
British Columbia and, in a blog post this week, noted "the petition 
didn't just fail in any riding where at least 45% of people had a 
mother tongue other than English: With the exception of the Downtown 
Eastside riding of Vancouver-Hastings, it didn't even reach 5% in any 
of them." As Paul Wells of Maclean's has reported, those ridings are 
the main focus of the Conservatives' and Liberals' multilingual ads.

"Imagine, making it available just like alcohol and cigarettes," the 
fretful mother in the Conservative ad scolds. Exactly. Mr. Trudeau 
needs her to imagine that, and then imagine her kid being turned away 
empty-handed.

What Mr. Trudeau may have accomplished already, however, is to knock 
the Conservatives out of their comfort zone. Mr. Harper pledged in 
August to "look carefully" at the Canadian Association of Chiefs of 
Police's longstanding proposal that simple possession under 30 grams 
be a ticketable offence, at the officer's discretion. This week, QMI 
reports that Justice Minister Peter MacKay is also mulling over fines 
for minor possession.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trudeau hasn't knocked the debate towards 
coherence. Because both the CACP and Mr. MacKay insist that in taking 
these positions, they are not supporting decriminalization. "That 
doesn't mean decriminalizing or legalizing," Mr. MacKay stressed, 
"but it does mean giving police options, for example, to issue fines 
in addition to any other sanctions, or as a substitute for other sanctions."

Back in 2002 the Canadian Alliance was perfectly happy to discuss 
partial decriminalization - albeit with a five gram ceiling as 
opposed to 30 In 2002 and 2004, when the Liberals introduced their 
ill-fated bills, that's pretty much exactly what we called 
decriminalization. Now, apparently, it's something else. 
Unfortunately, whatever you call it, easing up on consumers while 
leaving production in the hands of criminals is not a recipe for 
social improvement, and any conservative worth his salt ought to realize it.

In fact, while Conservative drug policy is often cast as an 
adamantine article of faith, back in 2002 the Canadian Alliance was 
perfectly happy to discuss partial decriminalization - albeit with a 
five gram ceiling as opposed to 30. The main counterargument wasn't 
that droves of children might quickly and systematically set about 
ruining their lives, but that Washington would freak out. In the 
intervening years, as American states have liberalized their 
marijuana laws en masse, the Conservatives somehow managed to move in 
the opposite direction.

If they are now willing to seriously consider decriminalization, all 
the while insisting that's not what they're considering and lashing 
out at the fellow who's proposing the most logical approach on offer 
- - the one that far more successfully keeps cigarettes and alcohol 
away from our precious children - it will be a curious form of 
political progress. But with these Conservatives, you take what you can get.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom