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Pique n your interest

Legalize It

According to the April edition of Rolling Stone magazine, Fernie B.C. is the coolest town in North America. It has everything a hipster could want – deep powder (in other years, anyway), cheap lift tickets, and best of all, a ready supply of marijuana.

While Rolling Stone is a rag, a sad and cynical shadow of its freewheeling and revolutionary past, it is unfortunately a well-read and influential rag – how else would you explain the commercial success of Fiona Apple? If even one per cent of RS’s 1.25 million readers make the pilgrimage, Fernie can expect a visit from 12,500 Cypress Hill fans who are going to expect a Cheech and Chong dream vacation.

Evelyn Cutts, the mayor of Fernie, was out doing damage control the moment the article came out, first correcting author Josh Dean’s mistaken impression that snowboarder Ross Rebagliati, the gold medalist who tested positive for a small amount of marijuana during the ’98 Winter Olympics, grew up in Fernie – that distinction belongs to Whistler.

Dean also wrote that Fernie is a perfect place to grow marijuana, but according to Mayor Cutts that’s just not true – the valley is "too narrow" she said, and "we don’t have a long growing season."

And while Cutts admits that puffing the cheeba is a fact of life for many Fernie residents, she says drug use is not as flagrant or as public as Dean made it out to be. The only thing that he was right about, it seems, is the plentiful snow, and even that’s sort of a half truth – 2000-2001 was probably the worst season on record for the resort.

Since it is unlikely that as many people will read the retraction as read the article proclaiming Fernie to be a pot haven, the damage to Fernie’s reputation has already been done. Did I say damage? I meant the boost.

Since when did the truth get in the way of a good story? The town will be flooded with fraternity types looking for fresh tracks and fresh herbs to pack into their bongs, and Fernie would be silly not to take advantage of the fact.

Why fight it? Why not just legalize Mary Jane in Canada and use the proceeds the pot industry generates to lure doctors, nurses and tech-people back from the States, while giving our struggling farmers a real cash crop?

It’s what people want. Decades of propaganda by governments has done little or nothing to curb drug use among Canadians and Americans. An all out war on drugs has accomplished nothing except to flood the prison system and keep the prices high on the street.

The illegal drug trade has fuelled organized crime, petty crime, murder, civil war, corruption, prosecution and persecution across the Americas, and the supply continues to meet the demand. You can be sure that the moment the RCMP seize one shipment of cocaine off the coast, another boat is steaming out of the harbour. Why? Because there is money to be made. Why? Because people need their vices.

When the States tried to ban alcohol, mobsters got rich off bootlegging. When Ontario tried to impose a new tax on cigarettes, the smugglers took over.

Illegal narcotics weren’t always illegal, and before the moral majority took the high road on drugs, good and honest people could make a living filling the snuff boxes of the nibs. Nowadays that honour falls to international crime syndicates, who don’t pay taxes!

The only way to take this power and money away from these criminal syndicates is to turn the power and money over to the biggest and most ruthless syndicate of them all – our democratically elected government.

Legalize it! Let shopkeepers sell marijuana in Fernie and Nelson and all towns in between! Let the coffee shops sell space cakes! Tax the hell out of it for good measure, regulate the quality and quantity, then watch the tourists flood our borders and airports.

Hard drugs should remain illegal, but less illegal then before – a cocaine addict probably could benefit more from medical and psychological assistance than from a seven-year tour of a Canadian prison. There will be addicts as surely as there alcoholics and chronic smokers, but I’m sure the government will discover that the majority of citizens can manage their habits effectively – widely available alcohol has not resulted in a nation of drunks. Are a few addictive personalities, most of who use the drugs anyway, worth all the trouble the war on drugs has caused? A legal drug trade would more than cover the cost of treatment for addicts.

There’s never been a better time for pro-marijuana forces to make their case. Marijuana has been approved for medical use. Hemp farmers are an agricultural success story. And with the exception of the U.S., the other 32 countries that will be in Quebec City for the Summit of the Americas have other things on their mind than free trade – legalization.

The U.S. has exerted some political pressure to keep drugs off the conference agenda, but ministers talk and South and Central American countries – the biggest losers with the most casualties in the war on drugs – are starting to talk about legalization. Mexico, Venezuela and Columbia have all suggested as much – quietly, but with growing conviction.

Canada shouldn’t be that far behind.

— Andrew Mitchell