Marijuana reform’s newest converts
Canadians don’t much care about marijuana — or that’s what pollster André Turcotte told the Manning Networking Conference last weekend, anyway. As part of his annual “barometer” poll, he compared the priority issues of conservatives and Canadians in general in search of areas of congruence and incongruence. Conservatives and other Canadians are united in not prioritizing such issues as abortion, “creating high quality jobs in [the] energy sector” and legalizing marijuana, he reported.
To the extent people vote on the issues, you might think this was bad news for Justin Trudeau. Politicians generally avoid talking up things people don’t care about. Tomorrow morning Mr. Trudeau could launch a flat tax plan and commit a Liberal government to colonizing the moon, and the Conservatives would probably still portray him as mainly interested in helping your kids score weed — as the fretful mother in a current Tory radio ad suspects.
Yet the Conservatives themselves seem oddly and increasingly seized of reform. In December, Justice Minister Peter MacKay announced he was considering allowing police to ticket offenders for small-scale possession. And on Wednesday he announced his department was in fact looking in to the matter. Legislation might even be forthcoming.
“The prime minister has signalled an openness to this,” he said. But Mr. MacKay wants you to know it’s not decriminalization. “The Criminal Code offences would still be available to police, but we would look at options that would give police the ability, much like the treatment of open liquor, that would allow police to ticket those types of offences.”
This is off message, to say the least. Firstly, the idea that marijuana is much more dangerous than alcohol is integral to the Conservative approach. “Imagine, making it available just like alcohol and cigarettes!” the fretful mother in the radio ad swoons in shock at Mr. Trudeau’s proposal to legalize and regulate pot.
Secondly, Mr. MacKay seems to trust the justice system’s discretion in how to deal with marijuana possession. That’s boffo. But he is attorney-general of a government so distrustful of judicial
Justice Minister Peter MacKay says his proposal isn’t decriminalization. But it clearly is
discretion that it implemented a sixmonth minimum sentence for owning six marijuana plants with intent “to sell, administer, give, transfer, transport, send or deliver” any of the product.
Thirdly, Mr. MacKay can swear this isn’t decriminalization until he’s blue in the face, but it really is — if not for everyone, then at least for the beneficiaries of police forces’ discretion. The U.S. National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) considers decriminalization to mean “no prison time or criminal record for first-time possession of a small amount for personal consumption” — “like a minor traffic violation.” Indeed, while Mr. MacKay sounds less ambitious than certain Liberals did in the 2000s when they stumped for decriminalization (by name), what he proposes sounds fundamentally similar.
Most Conservative MPs must realize that prosecuting non-violent marijuanarelated offences is a waste of resources. I dare say most also suspect there would be far fewer violent marijuana-related offences if its production and trafficking weren’t the exclusive domain of competing criminals — which is part of the case Mr. Trudeau makes for legalization. But they must have realized that ages ago.
Precisely because of the case made by Mr. Trudeau — whom the Tories want us to think flighty and ridiculous — and because few of us consider this a top priority, it’s hard to imagine the Conservatives willingly flirting with reform. And considering their gleeful lampooning of Mr. Trudeau’s policy, it’s not immediately clear why they would consider it a threat.
But maybe it’s not so much about Mr. Trudeau’s policy per se as its appeal to common sense. Decriminalization and legalization have many supporters in all parties. But neither is as popular as the idea that the status quo has utterly failed to keep marijuana away from Canadians — least of all young Canadians, who lead the developed world in consumption. Now here’s someone finally promising something new and bold.
Unlike decriminalization, legalization and regulation have the potential to drive down consumption. But decriminalization would provide an opportunity to punish pot-smokers more, and more conspicuously: Whereas police discretion currently involves looking the other way, going forward it might involve publicly cracking down on a bunch of hippies and Liberal-voting trustafarians. If it’s surprising the Conservatives have finally concluded change is necessary, that criminal sanctions can’t do the job, this nevertheless seems like a perfectly fitting replacement policy.