CANADA: ONE BIG GROW-OP

Bud Inc.: Inside Canada's Marijuana Industry by Ian Mulgrew Random
House Canada 287 pages, $35

There are occasions you realize everybody in your community agrees on
almost everything.

Sometimes this can be terrifying, but most times there's a certain
comfort to be taken when most everyone agrees that certain things -
say gay marriage, access to abortion and the legalization of
marijuana - are all desirables.

So it was a surprise when talk of drugs became serious at all last
year, after one of our favourite local distributors got arrested for
trafficking. We'll call him Corona Dave (even though he occasionally
drank Guinness or even Jagermeister). Let's just say he had an
additional problem: He happened to be in the country ever so slightly
illegally.

For Dave, his arrest (we won't go into specifics here but suffice to
say it belonged in the province of slapstick and involved Corona,
Guinness and Jagermeister) would inevitably lead to deportation. Weed
became the fodder for more serious discussion than usual.

Seeing as just about everybody will admit to having inhaled at some
point in their lives, why should our friend be penalized with
property seizure, jail, then house arrest, and finally being forced
to leave his country? Especially when, in so many people's eyes,
Corona Dave was practically providing a social service.

I had spoken with him about the risks of his profession before. He
wasn't worried. Police were after guys with harder stuff. Further,
some of his trade was supposedly in medical marijuana and he thought
that would be a mitigating factor in any arrest. Besides, we were on
the verge of legalization (or at least decriminalization), weren't we?

Corona Dave wasn't the only one lulled into a false sense of
security, it seems. Vancouver newspaperman Ian Mulgrew, in his new
book, Bud Inc.: Inside Canada's Marijuana Industry, chronicles the
legal battles of several dope crusaders who flaunted their disregard
for prohibition and are paying for it. Most of them are denizens of
another enclave not unlike the Annex, British Columbia.

The most famous case at present is Marc Emery, a.k.a. the Prince of
Pot. Emery owns a seed company that, until recently, openly dealt in
what is estimated to be millions of dollars annually worth of
marijuana seeds both out of his Vancouver store and through a
mail-order enterprise facilitated by the Internet. American Drug
Enforcement Agency officials took exception to Emery's blatant
practice of sending seeds south of the border by way of the post and,
requesting that the RCMP act on their behalf, had him arrested this
summer, along with partners Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams.

Emery et al are waiting to see if extradition treaties are upheld. If
they're turned over to the American authorities, they could face time
in prison. For horticulture.

But long before Emery's arrest, Mulgrew was interviewing him for his
extraordinarily well-researched book. Emery is candid about his
business and goals - "Overgrow the Government" is his motto - and he
claims to give away most of his money to organizations with a view to
political reform, even though he imagines prohibition's end would put
him out of business.

Emery is not the only major player to give Mulgrew the straight dope
(forgive me, please). One of the most amazing things about this book
is the author's access to this semi-underground industry. A
self-described long-time "consumer" himself, Mulgrew has
on-the-record interviews with defence lawyers who specialize in this
kind of business; small and big-time growers; specialist fertilizer
manufacturers; legalization activists and, of course, distributors,
including Don Briere - who, in 2004, opened the Da Kine Cafe in
"Vansterdam." Da Kine sold "medical marijuana" to anybody who signed
a form complaining about just about any ailment.

It lasted four months. The thin facade that Da Kine was a "compassion
club" - a centre that distributes medical marijuana to the terminally
or chronically ill - was destroyed by some crack detective work. As
Mulgrew notes, "one undercover police officer bought marijuana for
her testicular cancer, another for his premenstrual cramps."

Just about the only major players who aren't on record in Bud Inc.
are the Hell's Angels. Widely rumoured to control much of the trade
in Quebec and Ontario, the gangs who control the seedier side of drug
trafficking are obviously the primary reason anybody concerns
themselves with the enforcing of marijuana laws at all. However, as
is painfully obvious to any rational, even casual observer, the
elimination of prohibition would eliminate (by definition, even) the
criminal element.

This point is a major part of Mulgrew's argument for ending marijuana
prohibition. He suggests it's unfortunate that people who grow plants
think they require pit bulls or guns (or both) to protect their
garden. Prohibition breeds criminal behaviour, in pretty much exactly
the same way it did in the days of Al Capone.

Another element of Mulgrew's legalization stance is the ubiquitous
nature of the drug. I think we all had an idea that the B.C. economy
would collapse into itself like a black hole if the world
collectively and simultaneously gave up using marijuana, but the
picture painted in Bud Inc. is staggering. Mulgrew cites a banker's
estimate that half of Canadians are in some way exchanging money over
marijuana (mostly as consumers, obviously).

But still, half. Marijuana is B.C.'s major export, accounting for
roughly 5 per cent of the province's economy. Forbes magazine reports
that marijuana is now Canada's most valuable agricultural product.
And Paul Martin is still debating lumber tariffs with W?

Volume won't impress marijuana's opponents, I'm sure (not that I've
ever met any). Criminalizing (and pathologizing) normal social
behaviour is a life's work for many moral reformers (I have met some
of those). Other aspects of Mulgrew's argument, such as the drug's
usefulness in making chemotherapy more bearable, will perhaps be more
compelling to the moralists.

Thankfully, the book isn't a polemic. That would be boring. Bud Inc.
reads much like some of the better magazine writing out there. It is
a vivid and thorough depiction of a major Canadian industry and
should lead many readers to the conclusion that the end of
prohibition will be good for everybody - except perhaps Marc Emery.

Mulgrew feels that a happy ending is close at hand. He argues that
despite the drug's bad rep for being the gateway drug for every
unmotivated slacker on his way to chip-related weight gain or smack
(whichever you believe), the fact that the drug is empirically pretty
harmless, combined with its nearly universal usage and medically
proven benefits in specific circumstances, will eventually lead to
its decriminalization.

Which is an argument we in the Annex often forget even needs to be
made anymore - except on those rare occasions when we watch our
friends' lives torn apart for selling a plant.