TORONTO – The Friendly Stranger used to be located up a narrow stairway in a back room, a crowded little shop offering water pipes, T-shirts and other products of the cannabis – or marijuana – culture.
Now proprietor Robin Ellins has a prominent storefront on busy Queen Street and plenty of room to display everything from hempseed oil and chips to a full line of hemp clothing and elaborate smoking accessories.
The transformation from hidden emporium to thriving commercial venture is part of Canada’s slow but clear shift toward decriminalizing marijuana.
Justice Minister Anne McLellan says the issue should be studied, and a new Parliament committee on drug matters will look at decriminalization. Conservative Party leader Joe Clark is urging the elimination of criminal penalties for possessing a small amount of pot.
“It’s unjust to see someone, because of one decision one night in their youth, carry the stigma – to be barred from studying medicine, law, architecture or other fields where a criminal record could present an obstacle,” Mr. Clark said last week.
The government has proposed expanding medicinal use of marijuana, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal recently supported full decriminalization. Canada’s Supreme Court will consider a case this year that contends criminal charges for the personal use of marijuana violate constitutional rights.
Making possession and use of small amounts of marijuana a civil offense – akin to a traffic fine – instead of a criminal violation would move Canadian policy closer to attitudes in The Netherlands and away from the United States, its neighbor and biggest trade partner.
That worries U.S. anti-drug activists such as Robert Maginnis of the Family Research Council. “It will have a residual effect in this country of depressing prices and making marijuana more available,” he said.
He also knows a shift by Canada would boost the arguments of American advocates for easing U.S. drug laws.
But Joseph A. Califano Jr., president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, said increasing medical evidence on the harm caused by marijuana makes it unlikely that a change in Canadian law will affect U.S. policy.
“I don’t think it means much,” said Mr. Califano, a former U.S. secretary of health and human services.
In April, Canadian Health Minister Allan Rock proposed expanding the medicinal use of marijuana beyond cancer sufferers now allowed to take the drug to people suffering from AIDS-related complications and other terminal illnesses, severe arthritis, multiple sclerosis, spinal injuries and epilepsy. By contrast, the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld a federal ban on medical marijuana.
Arrest statistics show the disparity in the two nations’ approaches. Richard Garlick of the Canadian Center on Substance Abuse said about 25,000 people were arrested in Canada for simple possession of marijuana in 1999.
The U.S. figure for that year under the “zero tolerance” policy of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was 24 times higher, exceeding 600,000, says the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Washington. The U.S. population is about eight times that of Canada’s.
“Thank God, I’m in Canada,” said Mr. Ellins, the entrepreneur.
