Pubdate: Sun, 19 Feb 2012
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2012 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Robert Matas
Cited: http://stoptheviolencebc.org/

FORMER B.C. ATTORNEY-GENERAL JOINS CALL FOR MARIJUANA TO BE LEGALIZED

Geoff Plant has felt for years that the prohibition of marijuana is 
wrong. Now that the former B.C. attorney-general is out of 
government, he has joined the chorus of officials and former 
politicians pushing for the legalization of the drug.

"I have always had a problem with the idea that the state should 
criminalize an act which is essentially no more complex than putting 
a couple of seeds in your back yard, waiting a while and then, when 
something grows, you put it in your pocket, you chew it or you smoke 
it," Mr. Plant said.

Last week, Mr. Plant joined with three former NDP attorneys-general 
to support a campaign against federal legislation that would impose 
mandatory minimum sentences for minor, non-violent marijuana-related offences.

The campaign, backed by police officers, B.C. public health officers 
and the current and four former Vancouver mayors, calls for the 
federal government to regulate and tax marijuana, rather than prohibit it.

Mr. Plant was not a stranger to controversy when he was 
attorney-general from 2001 to 2005 in the Liberal government of 
Gordon Campbell.

He had a reputation as a moderate in the Campbell caucus. But the 
B.C. Law Society censured him after he closed courthouses and cut 
legal aid by 40 per cent in 2002. First nations leaders didn't trust 
him after he led the debate on the province's referendum on treaty rights.

However, when he was asked about the thorny issue of legalization 
after a Senate committee in 2002 had recommended that the drug be 
sold like tobacco or liquor, Mr. Plant sidestepped the controversy.

"This is a matter for the federal government. It is not a matter on 
which the government of British Columbia has a position and not a 
matter on which I have an opinion," he told a Vancouver newspaper.

Times have changed. Mr. Plant was asked in November by Evan Wood, 
director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the B.C. Centre 
for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, to lend his voice to the drug campaign 
organized by a coalition called Stop the Violence. The coalition was 
set up in response to gang-related violence associated with the drug trade.

Dr. Wood has an international reputation based on his ground-breaking 
research related to HIV and drug addicts. He was one of the founders 
of Insite, the supervised injection site in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Dr. Wood is also associated with St. Paul's Hospital, and Mr. Plant 
is chair of the board of directors of Providence Health Care, which 
runs the hospital.

Dr. Wood said he came into contact with Mr. Plant through his work at 
St. Paul's. "I said to him, 'What do you think about this?' He said 
he totally agreed, and he would be willing to go on the record," Dr. Wood said.

Mr. Plant was so enthusiastic about efforts to reform marijuana laws 
that he made the suggestion that other attorneys-general should be 
contacted to see if they would add their voices to the call for 
reform. He thought the voices of four former attorneys-general would 
maximize the impact of his endorsement.

"What has happened, in my view, is that increasingly the prohibition 
of cannabis is not just an ineffective policy," he said, "but is 
having the effect of increasing certain harms, as organized crime 
increasingly relies on the cannabis trade to support its activities, 
to make huge profits and to fight with each other with guns 
increasingly in public over their market share."

The problems have gotten worse over the past decade, which is why the 
campaign is timely, he said.

"And that's why when they approached me and asked me if I would agree 
to lend my name in support of [the campaign], I was happy to do so," 
Mr. Plant said.

He was impressed with the Stop the Violence campaign. "They're 
organized, they have built a research base, they are taking the time 
and trouble to try to mobilize public opinion," he said. "I was 
flattered they would ask me, they would think my voice would matter."

Despite Mr. Plant's role in the right-leaning B.C. Liberal 
government, his response did not surprise Dr. Wood. "I am more 
surprised when I hear people say they think the current system is 
working," he said.

"In Victoria, what politicians will tell you off the record, in terms 
of their beliefs and understanding of issues, and what they say on 
the record are two very, very different things," Dr. Wood said.

Around 12,000 people in B.C. were charged annually with possession of 
marijuana while Mr. Plant was attorney-general. The number has 
increased since he was replaced in 2005. In 2010, 15,638 people in 
B.C. were charged, Statistics Canada has reported.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom