Pubdate: Thu, 14 Mar 2013
Source: Outlook, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 Black Press
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/MRtUjxYF
Website: http://www.bclocalnews.com/greater_vancouver/northshoreoutlook/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1433
Author: Todd Coyne

HIGH TIME FOR A CHANGE?

A series of talks on marijuana reform have been cropping up across 
the North Shore, triggering debate among police, politicians, and the public

If you talk to police, politicians and school trustees on the North 
Shore, it's tough to find those who don't support some kind of 
marijuana reform. And even the few not openly in favour of legalizing 
the drug will admit our war on drugs is over and lost.

The Outlook took a poll last week asking every North Shore politician 
- - municipal, provincial and federal - on which side of the 
legalization debate they fell.

Every respondent from the three municipal councils came down in 
favour of relaxing Canada's marijuana laws, with the exception of 
one, who chose to remain "on the fence."

Among the North Shore's four BC Liberal MLAs, Joan McIntyre went 
on-record with her support for legalization and taxation, while Ralph 
Sultan opted not to "speculate" on the "decriminalization of drugs." 
North Vancouver MLAs Naomi Yamamoto and Jane Thornthwaite did not 
return The Outlook's query.

As for the North Shore's two Conservative MPs, West 
Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country representative John 
Weston replied, saying, "I am very keen to hear what the community 
has to say about the issue of marijuana and medical marijuana," 
adding "it is an issue that is more and more relevant on the North Shore."

North Vancouver MP Andrew Saxton, however, would not provide comment 
on the issue.

But it seems a majority of North Shore residents and British 
Columbians are ready to have the "decrim" discussion.

A poll last October found that 75 per cent of B.C. residents support 
the legal taxation and regulation of cannabis over our current 
enforcement model. It marked a six-percentage-point jump over just 
one year before and indicated a growing dissatisfaction with the 
status quo on cannabis policy, according to Angus Reid Public Opinion 
vice-president Mario Canseco.

"These beliefs cut across political, social and regional lines," 
Canseco said at the poll's release. "I can't think of any other issue 
where the laws on the books are inconsistent with the wishes of 
three-quarters of British Columbians."

Now picture this: A neighbourhood pilot project. Maybe it's Edgemont 
Village, maybe it's Ambleside, but more likely it's East Vancouver. 
One or two local cafes or a liquor store are licensed to sell 
marijuana to of-age customers who ask for it. Police put a moratorium 
on busting marijuana use in the neighbourhood while politicians and 
the public wait for the sky to fall in.

That's one proposal raised by a panel of marijuana reformers speaking 
across the North Shore last week, which included a former West 
Vancouver police chief and B.C. Solicitor General, a UBC 
epidemiologist, a former B.C. attorney general and a UBC 
international trade expert.

Among their audiences were police, politicians, teachers, doctors, 
firefighters, and representatives from the North Shore's school 
boards and chambers of commerce. And while peer pressure is no small 
factor, none in attendance spoke against reform.

The arguments presented for removing cannabis from the federal 
Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and then regulating it like 
alcohol and tobacco were as many and varied as the speakers who gave 
them. Defunding organized crime, generating tax revenue, reducing 
pot's availability to minors, allowing for its therapeutic benefits; 
all are compelling reasons to explore reform.

But perhaps none are more compelling than the fact that legalized 
regulation appears to be what most people want and, what's more, it's 
already how most British Columbians behave.

"That's the reality of today's society," West Vancouver Police Chief 
Peter Lepine told The Outlook last week. "If we're going to recruit 
police officers from mainstream society, then we know that the 
likelihood of somebody having experimented with drugs is a likelihood."

In North Van, RCMP spokesman Cpl. Richard De Jong told The Outlook 
following one such panel that he "couldn't really argue with" much of 
what he heard from the pro-reform side, but that he felt the rest was 
"up for further discussion."

He stressed, for instance, that waging economic war on organized 
crime by hitting B.C. gangs in their deep dope pockets is obviously a 
worthy incentive for those calling for reform. But those who 
routinely call on the Mounties to make it so are barking up the wrong tree.

"In terms of these movements that happen at the grassroots level, be 
it in the city, the district or provincial, there's really not much 
we as the police can do," De Jong said, "We don't have any greater 
say than anybody else because it's governed by federal law."

How then do those sworn to uphold the law do so knowing that a 
majority of the public - and maybe even they too - disagree with it?

It's a question former B.C. attorney general Geoff Plant and former 
West Vancouver police chief Kash Heed have grappled with. When the 
majority of citizens are opposed to the law - even just to one law - 
it undermines the whole rule of law, they argued.

"When nearly 500,000 of your fellow citizens are admitting to 
pollsters that on a regular basis they are breaking the law, what 
does that say for our respect for the law?" asked Plant. "It says 
something pretty bad. It says that we're all kind of living in an 
uneasy dynamic relationship with the very thing that, I think, is 
most fundamental to our society."

Former West Van top cop Kash Heed agrees, saying in his 30 years of 
policing with the VPD and later the WVPD, no amount of seizures or 
arrests could ever stem the supply of the drug nor alter its price, 
availability or use.

"The drug dealers are regulating drug use right now, not us," Heed 
told The Outlook in a phone interview last week. Were it regulated 
instead by the government, he argued, controls could be in place to 
ensure the drug's purity and potency, while its availability to 
minors would be restricted.

For West Vancouver Superintendent of Schools Chris Kennedy, he'd like 
to see pot use in young people handled the same way cigarette smoking 
has been, by reducing the habit's cool cache.

"I would love to see some of the perceptions around marijuana use 
marginalized like it is for tobacco," he told The Outlook last week. 
"Wherever we land on legalization and regulation, I hope we can do 
what we did with tobacco with young people and make it seem uncool, 
because obviously it can impede kids' learning."

Until that discussion happens, he said, the focus of drug education 
in West Van schools is and will remain on discussions around the 
dangers of alcohol. "That's still our primary concern with kids," he said.

So why, with so many British Columbians seemingly in support of a 
change, is it so tough to get a national discussion going?

Many openly blame the federal government, including many local 
municipal politicians. But while it's true that marijuana reform runs 
counter to the current government's tough-on-crime rhetoric, it may 
just be that where the provinces and municipalities are seen to have 
much to gain from marijuana reform, the federal government stands to 
gain little.

"The tax revenue that could come from a policy change would be on the 
provincial side and municipal side," said UBC economist Werner 
Antweiler, adding "the savings for the federal government would be 
very, very small."

Policing, for instance, is largely a municipal affair, with 
significant department resources in British Columbia dedicated to 
things like marijuana grow-op investigations, which can be lengthy, 
expensive and dangerous to officers.

Health care too is another avenue where the provinces could reap 
substantial rewards through the use of tax revenue from marijuana 
sales in the healthcare system, Antweiler said.

"The pressure on the federal government to do something is a lot less 
than on the provincial government," he added. "So there's a bit of a 
dilemma to get the argument carried forward to the federal 
government, which is the only government that can make the change."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom