Momentum Grows for Marijuana Legalization

My latest Calgary Herald column looks at the 4/20 protests from the weekend and how momentum seems to be on the side of marijuana legalization:

For reasons that still seem elusive, April 20th (4/20) is an annual day of marijuana activism. To some it’s a call to rally for legalization, while to others it’s merely a day to enjoy a toke.
Activism and consumption were both in abundance this past weekend in the annual 4/20 celebrations. That included a gathering of some 10,000 people on Parliament Hill Saturday, calling on the federal government to reconsider its drug laws.
While such demands on Ottawa may be as futile now as they were 20 years ago, in many other ways the event has taken on a much greater significance and legitimacy. Momentum is clearly on the side of those opposed to the status quo.
Support for legalization has never been higher. A Forum Research poll done last November found that 65 per cent of Canadians support either legalization or decriminalization of marijuana. Around the same time, an Angus Reid poll found that 57 per cent of Canadians (and 54 per cent of Americans) support legalization. Just last week, a poll found that almost three-quarters of voters in B.C. support taking a closer look at the regulation and taxation of marijuana.
While such polls may be - for now - merely academic in the Canadian context, in the U.S. it has meant actual change. Ballot measures to legalize marijuana passed in both Colorado and Washington. Voters in other U.S. states may soon get the same opportunity. It’s hard to see how this genie will ever be rebottled.
Mind you, it’s difficult to see why we’d want to maintain the status quo. Marijuana prohibition is at its core anti-freedom and anti-liberty. Why should we need the state to protect consenting adults from themselves? Furthermore, our hypocrisy is highlighted every day as consenting adults legally consume alcohol and tobacco.
Instead we squander billions of dollars in a futile and counterproductive war on drugs with little or nothing to show for it.
For example, a UNICEF report released earlier this month found that Canada has the highest rate of youth marijuana use amongst developed countries – 28 per cent of young people say they’ve used marijuana in the past year. Interestingly, countries with a much more liberal approach to drugs - such as Portugal, where all drugs are decriminalized – have much lower usage rates.
Conversely, teenage use of tobacco - a legal substance – is far lower. Only four percent of teens report smoking at least once a week. Thus, the argument that prohibition is needed to “protect kids” is exposed as an empty façade.
Yet still so many of our leaders cling to that façade, and not just in Ottawa, either.
Here in Alberta, the government is engaged in “stakeholder consultations” as part of their plan to make Alberta “grow-op free”. Not to reduce the number of marijuana grow-ops, but a pledge to eliminate them altogether.
This sort of rhetoric is really no different that the sort of rhetoric we’ve been hearing from drug war hawks for the past 40 years – merely another version of the “we’ll-get-tough-and-make-this-problem-go-away” approach that has failed so spectacularly.
True, there are indeed many problems associated with illegal grow-ops – other illegal activities, health hazards, and safety hazards are some of the problems identified by Justice Minister Jonathan Denis.
But the minister fails to acknowledge that this is all a by-product of prohibition, and without acknowledging the source of the problem, how can we hope to tackle it? Denis has suggested those who might notice that connection take the matter up with the federal government, for drug laws are of course federal jurisdiction.
We might recall, though, how the minister and others in the provincial government previously spoke out against the gun registry. If a federal law or policy is creating difficulties here in Alberta, it is certainly incumbent on the provincial government to speak up.
There is also the fact that legal, authorized grow-ops exist in Alberta – those facilities which are licensed to grow medicinal marijuana. If a subset of grow-ops exist free of the very problems we’re trying to eradicate, why would we ignore that?
As more and more Canadians are coming to the conclusion that we need smarter drug policy, our politicians are giving us anything but.