Pubdate: Tue, 15 Nov 2005
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2005 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: William Watson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Note: William Watson teaches economics at McGill University.

COCAINE IS OK, BUT YELLOW MARGARINE IS BEYOND THE PALE

We have an interesting approach to the law in Quebec.

The balloting doesn't end until tonight but it looks as if the Parti 
Quebecois is about to elect as its leader and possible next premier a 
39-year-old who admits to having used cocaine as recently as seven 
years ago, while he was a cabinet minister in Lucien Bouchard's government.

Now, the use of cocaine was at the time and still is illegal. People 
presumably are being incarcerated for it even as you read this. 
They're certainly in jail for selling the stuff.

But, if anything, the revelation of Andre Boisclair's drug use 
actually seemed to help his campaign. In the short run, at least, he 
seemed a victim of the boisterous press scrum at which he first 
addressed his former habits.

A cabinet minister admits to having broken the law, knowingly and 
recklessly, and the public gets all bothered about the press being 
rude. Civility is a fine thing, but what does it say about our values 
that his interrogators' rudeness won Boisclair more sympathy than his 
own admitted law-breaking earned him contempt?

We like to think of ourselves as a sophisticated bunch in Quebec. 
Yes, maybe cocaine use is illegal, but, hey, doesn't everybody do it? 
Or at least everybody who counts? If you've got money, if you disdain 
the slow lane, if you're famous, you're almost obliged to do it.

In this culture, being against recreational drug use means not being 
cool. Sure, the thinking goes, using cocaine might be against the 
law, but it's a bad law. We shouldn't be harassing people for their 
lifestyle choices. What they do on their own time is their own business.

Except, it seems, if what they're doing on their own time in the 
privacy of their own homes is - I know this is a family newspaper but 
in the interests of good journalism this disgusting act must be 
described in its full details - spreading margarine that is the same 
colour as butter onto their toast or mashed potatoes or pancakes or 
Brussel sprouts.

And then - brace yourself for this - ingesting it.

Some substance abuse clearly will not be tolerated, not even in 
Quebec. For at the height of the PQ leadership campaign, when legal 
relativism about cocaine was making the airwaves buzz, agents of the 
Quebec Department of Agriculture raided four Quebec City Wal-Marts 
and confiscated 72 tubs of illegal margarine. Street value: $179.28.

In this province, margarine can be any colour it wants, except the 
same colour as butter. Yes, Virginia, our government employs people 
to police the colour of margarine.

The rationale is that this protects consumers from unscrupulous 
margarine dealers who will try to pass off their edible vegetable 
product as real butter.

But, of course, the real reason for the law is to make margarine more 
expensive to produce. Having to stop the machines and change colour 
for the batch destined for Quebec costs money. And white margarine is 
less attractive, which raises the demand for butter.

Finally, there's the popular psychodrama of the poor Quebec dairy 
farm pitted against the foreign giant Wal-Mart. If it ever came out 
that Boisclair got his drugs from a foreign multinational, well, watch out.

We Quebecers evidently think we're smart enough to make our own 
choices about narcotics. It's just margarine we can't be trusted with.

Maybe the law against cocaine use is a stupid law. We can debate 
that, and probably should. I expect we'd get opinions on both sides. 
But everybody who doesn't have his own dairy herd understands the 
margarine law really is a stupid law. So why won't any politician say 
the emperor has no clothes and get rid of it?

With laws like that on the books, is it any wonder even cabinet 
ministers feel they can pick and choose exactly which laws they'll obey?
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman