BUTT OUT, JOHN WALTERS

Trashing Canada. Drug Czar Suffers From Reefer Madness

American drug czar John Walters is trashing his northern neighbour in
a most paranoid way. Paranoia, of course, is a staple of the "reefer
madness" culture that believes marijuana causes evil on a Satanic scale.

Walters is certainly losing it as he high-dudgeons his way from
microphone to microphone, hammering Justice Minister Martin Cauchon's
plan to decriminalize pot in the new year.

"You know Vancouver's referred to as Vansterdam. Go up, go get
loaded," he prattled from Buffalo the other day. Walters fears lax
attitudes "left over from the Cheech and Chong years of the '60s."

Some of us would argue that he's the poor fellow with the
reefer-madness madness. And he doesn't stop there. Warning of even
more crackdowns at the U.S. border for traveling Canadians, Walters
says "Canada is a dangerous staging area" for high-grade pot that has
an insatiable market in America.

Dangerous staging area? What are we, Afghanistan? Iraq?

No. We're a benign, peace-loving, law-abiding country that's less and
less beholden to the White House view that marijuana is on a par with
weapons of mass destruction. Or that prohibition, which worked so well
against alcohol in the last century, is working any better against
marijuana.

In recent months, Canadians have received two major reports that
followed dozens of earlier reports suggesting a new approach to the
U.S. failure. A Senate committee recommended legalization of pot; a
House committee called for removing possession of small amounts from
the Criminal Code.

The fact is that decriminalization won't make any real difference on
the street. The only way to do that is to legalize pot, as
Newfoundland Premier Roger Grimes suggests.

"Put an age limit on it and recognize there's some use of it out
there, make it safer, make some money from it."

As we did with alcohol a long time ago.

"What is critical," says United Church minister and MP Bill Blaikie,
"is that we make the distinction between cannabis and other drugs.

"If you keep lying to kids, they know the difference," says the NDP
leadership candidate. "We've got too many people going out there
telling kids, 'if you smoke marijuana, you'll end up on heroin.' "