Pubdate: Fri, 14 Apr 2017 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2017 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Rosie DiManno Page: A2 FAT CHANCE POT BILL WILL DO ANY GOOD Tell me what is the difference between a gangster in a stairwell and a licensed retailer in a pot shop? I mean, if you get down to the nub of the thing, it's all just window-dressing, pretending that one is less exploitive than the other. The retailer will be taxed, although none of those head-banging details were included in the marijuana legalization bills tabled by the federal government Thursday. The illegal dealer will be charged, most harshly if selling to a minor, under new Criminal Code provisions. There is a strong harm-reduction argument to be made for decriminalizing dope, a contention I would extend to the whole sweep of life-ruining drugs, if our collective emphasis were placed on health rather than punishment. Why not eliminate the consequences of addiction for crack and cocaine and heroin in measures that would remove users from the pernicious impact of traffickers also? Except we know, from countries such as Norway which have gone down that road - at least to the extent police don't apply laws on the books where users traditionally congregate - that addiction rates escalate when there's no police interdiction. There seems no right or wrong answer to the broader dilemma of wasted lives, which often tilt into prostitution and other crimes to support the habit. Just as there was no consensus of pleasing the sides on Canada's cannabis law when the package was revealed in Ottawa, legalizing pot for those over 18. To the reefer advocates - not just recreational users but the merchants of dope, which now include big-time entrepreneurs who've already invested huge capital to tee up legal production facilities once the restraints come off - the bill has been condemned as Criminalization 2.0. Opponents have slammed the undertaking as woefully ill-advised, essentially stripping the deterrence factor away from a substance that frequently is embraced as an entryway to drug use, especially by young people, in a country that has one of the highest marijuana consumption rates on the planet. Teenagers in Canada use cannabis more than any other developed nation in the world - 28 per cent admitting to it in an extensive poll conducted by the World Health Organization four years ago. These are young males and females whose brains are still developing, as the medical establishment has repeatedly warned. There definitely are cognitive impacts of heavy marijuana intake. Just as there are heavy consequences borne by families trying to steer their kids away from drugs. The ministers who sat on that podium in Ottawa on Thursday repeatedly asserted that the bill's intention is protecting children and keeping communities safe. "This is a very important day," said MP Bill Blair, Toronto's former police chief and the Liberal government's point-man on the dope file. "I've spent most of my adult life protecting children and keeping communities safe. From experience, I know that use of cannabis among our young people is among the highest in the world. I believe that we have to do a better job of protecting our kids. "I'm also aware from four decades of police work that this is a business overwhelmingly controlled by organized crime. And the profits of that criminal enterprise do no good in any of our communities." Yet now the government - federally and provincially, when the latter hashes out the jurisdictional finer points - will step in and assume the trafficking role, raking tax profits off pot distribution, extending the bureaucratic sin tax structure imposed on booze and cigarettes while attempting (in vain, I say) to take the moral high ground, as if there were some distinction between the profits of, say, a biker gang moving product to the street and registered dispensaries. I don't see it. The whole of the piece sends a message that pot isn't so bad; if you're an adult it's not bad at all. That's a posture that will simply encourage youth to smoke and toke and bong, even if the legislation is intended to keep marijuana away from them while further penalizing those who sell it to the underaged or using them for trafficking purposes. As this rough legalization bill has been presented, it was clearly not ready for prime-time unveiling, incoherent, defying comprehension much less application, all the relevant bits and pieces that the government claims will be resolved by the time the legislation becomes law, with a target date of 15 months hence. Here's but one hanging loose detail: What will become of those currently facing pot possession charges since police have continued charging suspected offenders in the year since Justin Trudeau's Liberals announced legalization was coming? Suspicion of possession routinely leads to arrests and further charges arising from searches because cops like to charge large. Will those searches be deemed retroactively illegal by the courts? Federal prosecutors have yet to indicate either way. According to the latest Statistics Canada research (2014 figures), a pot possession charge is laid every nine minutes in Canada. Charges under the Conservative government jumped 30 per cent between 2000 and 2014. With our clogged courts and judicial delays, thousands of charges are still moving through our sluggish justice system, millions of dollars spent on prosecution and defence lawyers. Will they be left in legal limbo? Hardly makes any Charter Rights sense. Doubtless there will also be constitutional objections over mandatory roadside saliva testing, especially since we're not yet at a point where such oral fluid screen devices for cannabis can be definitely trusted. Nor do we know where the government will set the level for blowing high. "We have with this bill, if it passes Parliament . . . one of the strongest impaired driving pieces of legislation in the world," Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould claimed. "I am confident of the constitutionality of roadside testing." Many are not. Many are of the view that the government doesn't have a clue what it's doing, except allowing Trudeau to keep a campaign promise when just about every other avowal he made on the electioneering trail has turned to ashes. How much will 30 grams of pot - the legal limit - cost? Who determines the price? And once that price is established, how in the world will law enforcement stave off the attractiveness of a cheaper version, generic dope, offered by dealers? This is precisely the mess that has made contraband cigarettes into a billion-dollar black market industry in Canada. Will you be able to smoke pot anywhere? Because, unlike alcohol, there is a contact high to marijuana fumes. Can you toke in a public park? Outside the Air Canada Centre? Some of us already have to hold our breath just getting to the front door of our homes. Look, I get and agree that adults should be allowed to smoke dope, grow dope, be as entirely dopey about dope as they wish. What I adamantly reject is the mythical magic of marijuana as a mind-expanding substance. It is profoundly dulling, stupefying. I've yet to meet a sharp-cookie chronic pot user. But go ahead, be my guest. (Though not if you're a guest at my house.) Far more troubling is the fallout for use among teens. They won't - and certainly shouldn't be - charged as young offenders for possession. That's not the crux of the thing. >From the voluminous research on the subject, we are well aware of the physical and mental implications of marijuana use on developing brains - - the very structure of those brains, which continue to develop until one's mid 20s. Physicians and pediatricians are well aware that functional changes in the brain, impacted by chronic pot use, affect planning and memory. There is evidence brains have to work harder to overcome the damage of cannabis consumption. And a lot of those adolescent noodles impacted by pot are already overburdened in the functioning department - the poor scholastic performance that so often drives teenagers to further delinquent behaviour. It's a downward spiral, with one in seven teenagers progressing to chronic pot use; physical and psychological addiction and an increased risk of some kind of psychotic outcome for regular dopers. Reducing drug addiction: fat chance. Disrupting gang trafficking: fat chance. Making communities safer: fat chance. Protecting our kids: fat chance. That's the skinny on this slapdash bill. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt