I don’t use marijuana. I have reasons why I don’t, and those reasons aren’t superseded by the fact that I travel from jurisdictions where pot is illegal to jurisdictions where it isn’t. I’ll be going into Washington State in a couple of weeks, for instance, and I know I’ll be greeted there by big billboards directing me to pot outlets with the message “Canadians Welcome!”. Washingtonians are sociable people, and this is their way of saying “High!”, I suppose, but I won’t respond, because my reasons against using their merchandise are still valid to me. If I were to drop in, it would only be to ask why they think anyone living in BC needs to go to Washington to obtain pot. In BC, it’s harder to avoid pot than to acquire it.

That’s why I find the current debate surrounding Canada’s pending legalization of marijuana use to be so peculiar; those opposed frame their arguments in terms of pot’s health and social hazards; implicit in their arguments is that pot’s illegality is presently preventing people from using it (which is, ahem, incorrect), and that, once legal, people who aren’t using it now will start, as though the poor simpletons will confuse ‘legal’ with ‘compulsory’. Smoking tobacco is legal, but who would ever find that to be an ipso facto inducement to take it up?

There’s little question that smoking pot is hazardous to your health; that respiratory rebellion on its inhalation is your system’s signal that your pastime may be less than beneficial, may be less than intelligent; I don’t know if it’s a greater threat to your health than, say, a visit to McDonald’s, or working in an office cubicle, or a dinner-theatre revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; what I know is that no one is arguing to make any of those illegal. There are social costs to heavy pot use, too, but they don’t come close to the costs of heavy alcohol use, for only one example, and no one is talking about outlawing booze; possibly, the worst social cost of pot right now is that, so long as it’s illegal, wicked people are being enriched and empowered by its inevitable sale.

The real crux of the issue is whether we, as a society, are content to continue make criminals of millions of decent, productive people who choose a measured use of marijuana for recreational purpose; for society to function, we rely on these people to make much more important decisions and choices every day. Why on earth would anyone think he must take this relatively innocuous responsibility out of their hands?

I was giving a speech in Oregon a couple of years ago, and it fell to the District Attorney to introduce me. Here is his entire introduction: “We have with us today a speaker of great reputation. I know we’re going to find him much better than our last speaker, who prattled nonsense for an hour about why Oregon must not legalize marijuana!” And I thought, if that’s the District Attorney saying it, the contention is over. The only question for us is why Canada has been so backward.

I don’t use pot because pot, as everything else of its ilk, tells lies, and I feel I only have time in this short life for truth; but where’s the truth in pretending that my peaceful, pot-using neighbour is a criminal?