Canada can’t even figure out how not to ban pot.

Canadians never forget the old joke about a pachydermy conference where French scientists discuss elephants’ love lives, the British praise and the Soviets denounce “Elephants and Empire,” Americans imagine breeding bigger better elephants, and Canadians empty the room with “Elephants: federal or provincial responsibility.” Then there’s the one about why elephants are big, grey and wrinkly. A: Because if they were small green and crumbly they’d be marijuana, and ending futile patronizing prohibition would cause finance ministers to swoop in and squabble over “Gouging the user: federal or provincial responsibility.”

As they just did, taking for granted a special high excise tax and bickering over the proceeds. Even Canada’s municipalities, federalism’s poor cousins long denied access even to elephant punchlines, wanted to score some of the grass cash to help with law enforcement against something that, um, is about to be legal.

It is a remarkable tribute to marijuana’s potency that it causes rapid, paralyzing confusion in people who don’t even consume it. (And in the case of politicians, the munchies, though only for tax revenue they already crave like a stoner with a bag of Oreos.) Under its influence, Canadian governments can’t even figure out how not to ban something. And they’re getting paranoid about keeping organized crime out of legalized marijuana.

How much is organized crime involved in cars, or couches? Or even alcohol when and where it’s legal? The current counterexample is tobacco, where governments have taxed and regulated something easy to smuggle so harshly that a black market emerged. A feat they seem likely to repeat with marijuana particularly because, as with tobacco, they just can’t get their minds around the simple notion that in a free society something is either prohibited or allowed.

If it’s legal, they only need a standard framework that prevents force, fraud and sale to a restricted group who ought not to have it. A concern, be it noted, not limited to drugs. You can’t sell minors cars, or let them buy furniture on an instalment plan. But how often do legal dealers try?

Ontario finance minister Charles Sousa justified provincial demands for the biggest baggie of marijuana revenue “because we’re bearing more of the costs.” And the National Post story explained “The added expenses likely to land with the provinces are expected to include public-awareness campaigns, beefed-up policing, busier court systems and increased road safety efforts.”

They expect “beefedup policing” and a “busier court system” once it’s NOT illegal? How busy are the courts with cases involving chairs, or spinach? What part of “legal” don’t they understand? Yet the ultimate decision to split the money 25-75 and cap the federal take at $100 million included cities getting some cash “to help them defray the cost of making pot legal across Canada.”

What’s the cost of making carrots legal? Obviously they come under laws of general application, from transportation to adulteration. But since marijuana is perhaps a $10 billion industry at inflated black market prices, it won’t contribute much to existing regulatory costs in a $2 trillion economy. Certainly not compared to the half-billion dollars a year now spent on prohibition. (As for government marijuana stores, please tell me they’ll make money. Government gambling and booze does.)

Part of the effort to bogart the tax revenue was concern about preventing stoned driving. But as with almost any other legitimate restriction on an intoxicant, this problem doesn’t get harder if you legalize it. Something like one in eight Canadians over 14 already uses pot at least occasionally.

Do politicians really think none ever get behind the wheel high? Apparently so, since to date they’ve done nothing about it. Why do we only now need a marijuana breathalyzer? Was it safer to drive under the influence when it was illegal?

The elephant in this bathtub is Canadian governments’ conviction that they must foster everything worthwhile and discourage and plunder everything else. Thus outgoing Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin just claimed that internal free trade in alcohol risks “imposing a huge burden on governments to come up with some agreements quickly so that our society can be regulated in an orderly fashion.”

The job of the state is not to regulate our society in an orderly fashion. It is to detect, punish and deter force and fraud. I frankly don’t believe the people currently holding office, or any representative sample of their predecessors, would be capable of regulating our society in an orderly fashion even if it were desirable. I don’t even believe they could regulate marijuana sales successfully. And I see no reason for them to try. But their concern is always how to regulate, not whether.

Hence the economic conference where the Americans praised free enterprise, the Russians said “Central planning? Don’t go there,” and the Canadians, impeccably bilingual, asked “What is this laissez faire?”