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?