Dan Brown
Who has inhaled?
May 29, 2004
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| Dan Brown |
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If you listen to the leaders of the three main federal parties, you might get the impression that the issues that matter most to Canadians are things like health care, tax policy and financial aid for municipalities. That list is hardly complete, though, and it omits one issue that many people in this country are very passionate about: marijuana.
Unlike a motherhood issue like health care - Paul Martin, Stephen Harper and Jack Layton are all for improving Canada's health-care system - the marijuana question is one on which the divisions between the parties are very clear. Marijuana is also something with which the leaders themselves have had very different personal experiences.
The only federal leader to openly admit having smoked marijuana is Layton. In interviews he has called it a "wonderful substance," and although the NDP platform - which was released Wednesday - doesn't use the word "legalization," it calls for a drastic easing of the laws that govern pot.
According to the document, if the NDP forms the next government, it would introduce a "non-punitive, rule-based approach to adult marijuana use with a major emphasis on prevention, education and health promotion, while seeing that the provinces have the resources to prevent and detect impaired driving more effectively."
If they return to power, the Liberals would not go as far as the NDP. According to campaign spokesperson Heidi Bonnell, the party plans to reintroduce Bill C-10, which would punish people who use marijuana by means of fines (the proposed legislation died when the Prime Minister called the election).
"The Liberal Party is in favour of the decriminalization - not legalization - decriminalization of marijuana," Bonnell says from Ottawa.
According to Bonnell, it was the Conservative Party that prevented the bill from advancing by using stalling tactics in Parliament.
And does the Liberal Leader have any first-hand experience with marijuana?
"The answer is no, however he did once eat a hash brownie," Bonnell says. Martin's wife, Sheila, reportedly baked the potent dessert.
The Conservative Party stands alone in wanting to keep pot out of the hands of Canadians. "It's a harmful substance. And we have to deal with it as a harmful substance," says Randy White, the British Columbia MP who is the Tory point man when it comes to drug policy. White says a Conservative government would not consider decriminalization unless several conditions had been met, the first and most important being the instituting of a national drug policy.
Bill C-10 notwithstanding, White thinks the Liberals never intended to make access to pot any easier. "The whole idea of marijuana decriminalization was really a red herring and a diversion from the fact that there was no drug strategy, and therein lies the problem," he says from his riding of Langley-Abbotsford.
As for Harper, a spokesman says the Opposition Leader has never experimented with marijuana - and with good reason.
"He hasn't [smoked pot]," says Andrew Skaling. "In fact, he's never smoked anything because he has asthma."
If Canadian voters are looking for an organization that would definitely focus more attention on marijuana if it formed the next government, there is one very clear alternative: the Marijuana Party. By the admission of its leader, Marc-Boris St-Maurice, the party is a "one-and-a-half issue" party. (The one issue is marijuana, the half is electoral reform.)
"We want to end prohibition, we want to legalize it. We want it legislated, regulated," he says.
St-Maurice is equally blunt when asked about his own experiences: he refuses to discuss them. "We don't consider that's an appropriate question," he says over the phone from Montreal.
And why not?
"Well, it's a personal matter. It doesn't really have a bearing on one's capacity to get the job done of legalizing it." He also says he refuses to answer the question because "it's tantamount to asking someone to admit to a criminal act."
"I would probably have a different answer if marijuana were legal," he says, then adds that he is troubled and insulted when he sees politicians admit to pot use - and not get punished.
St-Maurice isn't the only leader of an alternative party who won't speak openly about possible past marijuana use. Jim Harris is the leader of the Green Party, which also advocates the legalization of pot.
"That's an inappropriate question," he says when asked about his history with the drug.
"I believe that what is more important is the party's stance. You're asking me to admit to a criminal act, and so I don't appreciate it and I refuse to answer the question."
Although the Marijuana Party's St-Maurice won't answer questions about his own history with pot, he will say one thing: he loves hearing sentences that begin "If the Marijuana Party was to form the next government �"
"I'm like Homer Simpson, he says dreamily. "I'm in The Land of Chocolate."
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