Mick’s son Christoph noted that his father was known for falling trees, firefighting, sailing and rugby. When we first moved to Bowen more than 30 years ago Mick was the one we called when we needed tree work done. Every year for more than a decade he would come over and take out a tree or two, often taking out fewer than we had initially thought was appropriate. It never seemed that we were hiring Mick to work for us. It always seemed more accurate to say that Mick was coming over for a conversation and would take down some trees, if he thought that made sense. And when he’d finally give us a bill, we always thought it was too little.

We didn’t know Mick all that well, but it was obvious that he treated people with kindness and respect, making them feel comfortable in his company.  He crammed a lot into 68 years  – family and children, good times on the water, on the rugby field, the golf course, and in the company of his close friends. He left us too early, but I will raise a glass or two to his memory tonight – he was a real sweetheart.

Undeterred, activists and pundits are now squabbling over the future of cannabis. How is it to be regulated? Placed in the pharmacy and made available on prescription? Regulated like fine red wine, with a focus on the quality of the product, the metaphorical grapes, the vineyards, and the country of origin?

This talk all seems a little bizarre, reminding one of Woody Allen’s response to Christopher Walken’s character in Annie Hall:  “I have to go now, Duane, because I’m due back on the planet earth”.

We are having a conversation about how we should regulate the consumption of cannabis, at the same time that we have a government that not only seeks to retain criminalization and the possibility of imprisonment for adults who possess the drug, but is also bringing a new strategy to the table: imprisoning thousands of cultivators, irrespective of whether they are violent or have engaged in any form of predatory crime, beyond a relatively basic horticulture.

An understanding of how to approach cannabis should be helped by our experiences with tobacco and alcohol. Like cannabis, these are mind-active drugs that many of us can become dependent upon. But unlike cannabis, they appear to cause a great deal of harm and much premature death, even when current rates of use are taken into account. Cannabis is certainly not benign, but it simply cannot produce the rates of heart disease and cancer that tobacco can — and it is clearly not as destructive of social life as alcohol. As a local police officer told me many years ago, “if it wasn’t for alcohol, I’d only have a part-time job”.

In the 1950s Life Magazine ran photos of doctors in lab coats, with stethoscopes dangling from their necks. The captions read, “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarettes”. At the bottom of the advertisement was a life expectancy table, apparently demonstrating that since the advent of the modern cigarette in the 1920s, life expectancy had increased by about 15 to 20 years. Smoking was celebrated as the “pause that refreshes”.

In retrospect, we allowed corporate interests to make outrageous claims about a highly destructive and highly addictive drug. Tobacco companies could not make such idiotic claims about their product today. Public health and non-smokers’ rights initiatives have made important contributions to massive declines in the per capita consumption of this drug. In the mid 1960s more than half of all Canadian adults smoked; today, even in an era of greater availability of tobacco, less than 20 per cent of us continue to indulge in what must be acknowledged as a game of Russian roulette.

Alcohol presents us with something of a different story. There is compelling evidence that moderate use of the drug (up to two drinks per day, and preferably red wine) is consistent with good health. Difficulties arise with consumption beyond these levels, and, unhappily, that is not a rare event. We also have the not inevitable but clearly potential consequences of intoxication: impaired driving, interpersonal violence and marriage breakdown.

What we’ve learned from alcohol and tobacco – and we should not forget when it comes to cannabis – is that mind active drugs can be abused, and that advertising and promotion of these products can cause significant harms, whether intended or not. At the same time, however, we can see that the extent of use of a drug is not simply a function of its availability. Tobacco is more available today that it was in the 1960s, but use has dropped significantly. And cannabis use in the Netherlands, where the drug can be purchased at any of more than 600 “coffee shops” is much less substantial than it is in Canada, the U.S. or the United Kingdom. Less than 7 per cent of Dutch adults reported use in the most recent survey year, while in Canada, the UK and the U.S. the comparable figures all sit at 10 per cent or more.

Government policies regarding mind-active drugs should be dictated by the best available science and cast in the framework of public health, not a historically and culturally mediated morality. The line that separates cannabis from tobacco and alcohol today cannot be understood by public health, only by history, culture and politics. Cannabis was the bad drug of Mexican migrants, those who played jazz and the blues (often blacks), and the beat and the hippie generations. In contrast, alcohol and tobacco are the so-called good drugs of established North American corporate interests.

But the response to this reality should not be one of extolling the virtues of cannabis; it remains sound social policy to discourage cannabis use, and to construct responses to its realities that are premised upon the protection of public health. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, however, there is no compelling evidence that criminal prohibition will be helpful in pursuing this objective.

At the heart of the disagreement are competing conceptions of research and scholarship. How are we to study violence and to assess whether it has been increasing or decreasing? What analytic tools do we bring to the table?

Pinker, sensibly enough (in my view), chooses to look at the rate of violent death over time, in pre-state societies, in medieval Europe, in the modern era, and always in a global context; he writes about inter-state conflicts, the two world wars, intra-state conflicts, civil wars, and homicides.

In doing so, he takes a critical barometer of violence to be the rate of homicide deaths per 100,000 citizens; the global gold standard for homicide can currently be found in states where the figure in question hovers at an annual rate of about one per 100,000 culpable homicides within a population – a status currently achieved by the Baltic States of Finland, Denmark and Norway, the province of Newfoundland, and with many Western European states, and Canada itself, in close pursuit.

Pinker’s aim is to explain the variables that have contributed to the global decline in violence that we have witnessed, particularly during the past 30 years, but also, perhaps more fundamentally, during the past 500 years.  He points to the emergence of literacy and the enlightenment, to competent democratic governments, peaceful commerce, and more recently, the overwhelming support for racial equality, women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, and animal rights.

He does not pretend that the world is now safe from significant violence in the future; he is not so foolish as to make such a confident prediction about a necessarily complex future (see Dan Gardner’s book, Future Babble). Pinker is simply assessing, rather, what the evidence is telling us about the extent of violence in the world today. For example, we learn that the risk of being a victim of a homicide has always been much higher in often romanticized tribal or non-state societies than it is today in a modern liberal state. And even during the 1970s and early 1980s the homicide rates in Canada and the United States were more than twice as high as they are today.

It is not surprising that Pinker has his critics, generally individuals who are reluctant to acknowledge quantitative data as relevant, and who cling to the notion that human beings have never been more violent than in this century. Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in the New Yorker, laments, contrary to fact, that there is no discussion of “colonialism” in Pinker’s book and concludes, “Name a force, a trend or a ‘better angel’ that has tended to reduce the threat, and someone else can name a force, a trend, or an ‘inner demon’ pushing back the other way”.

The response to this is simple: yes, one can do this, but there will be no credible evidence in support of such a claim. Kolbert and her dance of the dialectic cannot disguise the reality that the rate of violence, as measured by culpable homicide, has markedly decreased over human history. Other critics (for example, Robert Epstein in Scientific American), oddly enough, take issue with canvassing the rate of culpable homicide, preferring to focus on the absolute numbers of deaths as a more critical variable of relevance.  And still others, John Gray in Prospect and Joe Carter in First Thoughts, take issue with Pinker’s atheism:  “the delusions of liberal humanism”, as Carter puts it, and a “delusion of peace” claims John Gray. He writes, “Pinker’s attempt to ground the hope of peace in science is profoundly instructive, for it testifies to our enduring need for faith”.

Oh dear. For those of us who have no need for faith, this is a little insulting. But back to the book. One of the most interesting passages in the 696 page treatise concerns the “de-civilizing” era of the late 1960 and early 1970s, a time when homicide rates in both Canada and the United States (and most other Western democracies) more than doubled, before falling dramatically after 1990. How to explain the increase in violence and its subsequent decline?

Pinker is skeptical of the often cited influence of demographic shift, suggesting, fairly enough, that the arrival of the baby boom generation (a surfeit of young men within the population between the mid 1960s and the early 1990s) cannot account for all of the more than doubling of homicide rates during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Instead he points to the conflicts of the era as more critical, “ a glorification of dissoluteness shaded into an indulgence of violence and then violence itself”. Pinker points to support for Marxist theories of violent conflict, lack of respect for an older generation, the sexual revolution and its rejection of marriage, and the depiction of work or wage labour as a bourgeois enterprise. As these sentiments began to disappear in the 1990s they were replaced with a new logic of respect for rights: feminism, gay rights, children’s rights and animal rights. In this context, cultural support for violence has dramatically diminished; we have plenty of good evidence, from both police data and victim surveys, that domestic violence has dropped dramatically in North America during the past 30 years.

Scholarly literature in criminology reveals disagreements about the strength of the importance of demographic shift, in explaining both the increase of the 1970s and the decrease of the 1990s. There is virtually no support for claiming that population changes perfectly explain both the rise and the fall of violent crime, but there is also very little support for the notion that these population changes are entirely irrelevant (as Pinker concedes, though to a rather limited extent).

What factors gave rise to the licentiousness of the late 1960s and early 1970s, other than having a high percentage of young men in our populations?

We have plenty of evidence that this was a time of remarkable social change. The divorce rate rose by more than 400 per cent, after separation and divorce became socially acceptable (and legally acceptable) practices. For men and women at the margins, with limited resources and limited social skills, intimate violence increased.  The per capita rate of consumption of alcohol also rose by 50 per cent within the decade. And the rallying cries of “make love, not war” and “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” both pointed to a substantial challenge to the existing social order.

But where did these sentiments come from? I’d suggest two external factors of relevance: the technology of the birth control pill, first made widely available in the early 1960s, and the emergence of accessible global transportation – travel by jet – available to millions, made possible again during the 1960s. The birth control pill changed the realities of sexual relations between men and women; it was now possible for women to enjoy sexual freedom without the fear of pregnancy. Questions were raised about the roles of sexuality, sexual freedom and monogamous commitment.

And global travel brought young men and women into contact with mind-active drugs beyond the confines of North America: marijuana and hashish in Lebanon, India and Thailand, coca in South America and opium and heroin in southeast Asia.

The Beatles and others celebrated the insights of these “new” mind-active drugs, and the young pointed to both the limiting taboos of apparently outdated sexual mores and the hypocrisy of the line that divides legal from illegal drugs.

We are still sorting out these profound cultural changes; the rate of marriage has declined and the rate of divorce has remained relatively stable since the late 1970s. The violence of the drug trade continues, but a mandate of public health has begun to emerge, albeit in a somewhat limited and inchoate form.

This is all to say that the changes of the 1960s remain with us today, with the sharper edges smoothed out; there is no longer talk of the bourgeois nature of work, the desirability of violent class conflict, or the lack of any need for monogamous commitments. To paraphrase Pinker, we have re-civilized ourselves, supporting new recognitions of gay rights, women’s rights, animal rights and children’s rights.

Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature is a remarkable book, extolling science as a mechanism for understanding issues that are all too often shrouded in unstated moralities, and highly questionable empirical assumptions. Whatever agreements or disagreements may spring from his specifics, the author deserves our respect, gratitude and applause.

British Columbia Correctional Officer, November, 2011

In August of 2010 the Correctional Service of Canada issued a Commissioner’s Directive on Inmate Accommodation, mandating increases in the double bunking of  federal inmates. The Directive noted that the passage of The Tackling Violent Crime Act and The Truth in Sentencing Act were exerting pressure on current prison capacities and that “Even with proposed accommodation identified in CSC’s annual plans, the Service will be forced to increase the level of double bunking”.

The Directive also noted that “double bunking (one cell designed for one inmate occupied by two) is inappropriate as a permanent accommodation measure within the context of good corrections”.

By now, most informed Canadians know about the crime bill, poised to pass into law in the very near future, given a Conservative majority in the House of Commons. We know that crime has been decreasing since the 1990s, but that under the Harper Conservatives imprisonment has been increasing. The new bill aims to send new categories of non-violent criminals to jail: most notably, those previously sentenced to conditional terms of imprisonment; marijuana cultivators; and user-dealers of other illicit drugs (often individuals with a complex web of mental health and substance abuse issues). But let’s put aside the obvious – and justifiable – critique of the legislation:  that it’s expensive, unnecessary and not at all focussed on violent crime.

What’s even more appalling is that this dramatic increase in prisoners is being imposed upon the current state of Canada’s prisons. Double bunking is now routine, federally and provincially, with adverse impacts on the safety of both inmates and correctional officers. At Stony Mountain prison in Manitoba and Mission Institution in B.C., matters are even worse: segregated inmates are sharing cells, a situation described by the Office of the Correctional Investigator as “a violation of government policy, the Charter of Rights, and international human rights standards”.

Put differently, we haven’t begun to see the impacts of the omnibus crime bill, and we are already in serious trouble. In British Columbia inmate to staff ratios in provincial corrections have doubled over the last decade, and both assaults against staff and inmate on inmate assaults have escalated dramatically; the Office of the Correctional Investigator for Canada has noted a similar escalation of violence in federal facilities. The B.C. government has announced plans to build a new correctional centre, but it appears unlikely that the construction of that prison will even come close to keeping pace with the increases in imprisonment that the crime bill will produce.

Perhaps the intent of the Conservative crime bill is to imprison a greater percentage of Canadians convicted of criminal offences, and to impose a more harsh and difficult regime of imprisonment upon them. The logic may be that if imprisonment is nasty and brutish, those imprisoned will be less likely to return.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence to suggest that being treated badly in prison will decrease the likelihood of an individual committing further crimes after release. In fact, the evidence suggests the contrary. Tragically, there is already very little room in Canada’s prison systems for any focus on rehabilitation — on assisting the re-integration of offenders into the community. The crime bill can only serve to impose greater stresses on such possibilities.

As matters stand now, both provincial and federal prisons have significant percentages of mentally disordered offenders behind their walls, individuals easily victimized by other inmates and inappropriately housed in these settings. Double-bunking continues to increase, and assaults against both officers and inmates continue to rise. The Conservative government is intent upon increasing inmate populations in both federal and provincial correctional centres. It is particularly tragic that, if only by neglect, they are willing to risk the health and safety of both correctional officers and inmates in order to accomplish their goals.

The Premier is an intelligent woman; she must know that the very expensive elements of the crime bill have nothing to do with making our streets safer. The Youth Criminal Justice Act already mandates significant sentences and almost routine transfer to adult court for youth offenders who commit serious crimes of violence. The wholesale elimination of conditional sentences for a range of property offences removes judicial discretion from cases where house arrest would be an appropriate judicial response. Perhaps most important, the crime rate has been declining and there is no credible evidence that putting all sorts of people in jail for longer periods of time will make our society more safe.

Take the mandatory minimum term of six months imprisonment for any person who grows more than six marijuana plants. We know from RCMP commissioned research that most marijuana growers are not violent, and from a public health perspective, the harm that they impose upon their consumers is rather insignificant, at least in contrast to the harms imposed by the purveyors of tobacco. It’s the prohibition of cannabis that produces occasional violence, not the growing of the plant.

A crackdown on cannabis cultivation will only raise the stakes for those involved in the industry, making violence a more likely by-product of the trade. More specifically, consider the costs to the province. For the past decade B.C. has been convicting about 500 cannabis cultivators a year; the costs of imprisoning these folks will be about $70,000 per year, per person, and this doesn’t even begin to take account of the capital costs of construction for new jail cells.  By law, the province must pay for the costs of any sentence of two years less one day, or less –  and we can assume that the cost of incarcerating marijuana cultivators, formerly subjected to fines (and producing revenue for the province) will be somewhere between $20 and $40 million per year. That’s the kind of money that would fund anywhere from 200 to 400 new teachers in the province –wouldn’t you rather have your tax dollars spent on that kind of initiative?

The picture is just as bad or worse with the other much less popular illegal drugs: heroin, cocaine, crack and crystal meth.  The convicted users and dealers in these drugs are typically individuals with mental health and substance abuse difficulties. These people are already in significant supply in our provincial correctional centres, smearing feces on the walls of their cells and slashing themselves; the crime bill will only serve to add to their numbers inside prison walls, invoking a blind morality as a singular approach to what would be so much better treated as a public health problem.

What’s most disappointing in the Premier’s approach is her use of an ongoing federal Conservative tactic – accuse those who oppose the legislation as supportive of criminals, wanting to increase crime, and willing to let both sex offenders and violent offenders roam our streets.

It would be better if the Premier did what her predecessor Gordon Campbell did before instituting the carbon tax – look carefully at all the evidence and propose policy that is consistent with the best available information, not policy that is simply based on a perceived political expediency.

Close attention to relevant data – or even basic arithmetic – does not appear to be a hallmark of the current government. Slightly less than 40 per cent of Canadian voters cast their ballots for the Conservatives earlier this year, and only 61 per cent of eligible voters actually made it to the polls. The reality, then, is that the Conservatives – and many of their policies — would appear to have the support of less than 25 per cent of adult Canadians.

But let’s put aside their misplaced attribution of popular support. What of the crime bill itself? There are a few positives here, but let’s look at just two elements that will cost us billions of dollars over the next five years, mostly in the form of new prison construction and the associated costs of incarceration. First, the proposal to end conditional sentencing, commonly known as house arrest, for a wide range of crimes: theft over $5,000 and breaking and entering are two of the more prominent of these offences.

Conditional sentences have, to date, significantly reduced rates of incarceration and saved tax dollars, without any corresponding reductions in social safety. In fact, study after study has revealed that incarceration imposes significant harms on most offenders, typically increasing risks of further involvement in crime. The Harper government simply believes that the evidence on these points is irrelevant – that the morally appropriate response is to impose a greater (and more expensive) measure of pain on those who commit these crimes.

Even more costly and more bizarre, given the support of a majority of Canadians for the decriminalization of cannabis, is their plan to imprison anyone who grows six marijuana plants or more — for a minimum term of six months, irrespective of whether they have employed any violence in their operations (an RCMP study of marijuana cultivators reveals that less than 10 per cent of those apprehended are engaged in any kind of violent activity).

Why such apparently mean-spirited approaches, particularly when crime is declining, and there is no credible evidence that these initiatives will reduce crime? The price tag – at least $2 billion over the next five years – forces us to realize that this is not a fiscally conservative approach to the problem. We all want more social safety, but these initiatives won’t get us there. Instead, the Conservatives are prepared to spend billions on policies that have long been discredited, and have no hope of any tangible return on investment.

The best answer is that this debate has very little, if anything, to do with evidence. The Harper Conservatives believe in punishing crime, even if the costs of their effort reduce Canadians’ accessibility to health care and education. Their policies on crime are simply a window into their emotional and ideological worldview.

With a majority in place, the Conservative government now has the opportunity to tell us what they really think – or more to the point, to impose themselves on the rest of us. As Bob Rae has said, the sad reality is that it will be left to future governments to clean up the mess that they are creating.

I did not know then how much I would learn from Liz Elliott and how much she would influence my view of murder and murderers, of prisons and prisoners, and of the importance of understanding and supporting those human beings who are typically the most vilified within our culture. In a recent email Liz thanked me for being a mentor to her (along with expressing frustration and outrage at yet another particularly lame initiative from the Harper Conservatives).

I think I provided little mentorship to Liz, in contrast to what I learned from her. Because of Liz, faculty and graduate students became engaged in Canada’s penitentiaries, bringing students in for seminars – to talk to murderers about the how and why of their crimes, about imprisonment, and about their hopes for the future. For years many faculty and students met with Lifers Groups and Drug Awareness groups in Mission Institution and in other federal penitentiaries. Liz was almost always the catalyst, ultimately giving thousands of students a glimpse into the lives of those behind the prison walls.

She was honest and compassionate, and both tough and gentle in her interactions with prisoners — and prison guards. I recall vividly the stark honesty of many of the interviews that she conducted with men and women serving time for murder; she was able to capture the often horrifying realities of what they had done, but she also captured the humanity in these tragedies.

Her growth into a leading figure in Canada’s restorative justice movement was not a surprise, and it is a tragedy that she will not be able to continue that work. As Rob Gordon said in an email to faculty and graduate students on the day of her death, a warrior has fallen. For those of us who share her commitment to social justice and correctional change, he added, we must now continue this struggle with greater resolve.

Indeed. Liz demonstrated grace, dignity and courage in fighting the cancer that ultimately took her life. I can think of few better tributes to her than to continue fighting for the causes that she cared about. Rest in peace, my friend.

Dear Mayor Turner and Members of Council:

I write to urge you to postpone consideration of the above bylaws, most particularly Amendment Bylaw No. 299, 2011 (Environmentally Sensitive Development Permit Areas). I do not think the public has been adequately informed or consulted about what you are proposing, and I do not think that your proposals enjoy anything more than the support of a small minority of Bowen Islanders. Perhaps more to the point, the municipality’s publication of details both on its website and in our local newspaper has been very difficult to follow, even for those of us who try to keep up with municipal politics. What we have seen to date is a virtually impenetrable assembly of acronyms, accompanied by substantial amounts of relatively confusing text, and maps detailing environmentally sensitive areas of various kinds — without any significant justification for the locations of these areas.

I have lived on Bowen Island as a full-time resident for more than 30 years, and I have always supported the ethic of the Islands Trust mandate with respect to our environment: preserve and protect. For 30 years my wife and I have gathered wood from our property to provide a source of heat each winter. And every year or two we have taken down trees, typically an alder, maple or hemlock or two, in order to provide for this source of heat.

I now learn that I will be prohibited from engaging in this practice unless I fit within the exemption cited below:

9)              The removal of not more than two (2) trees with a trunk diameter of up to 40 centimetres in diameter (measured 1.5 metres above the ground) or the clearing of ten (10) square metres of vegetated area per calendar year per parcel is allowed, provided there is replanting on each occasion of at least four (4) trees or re‐vegetation of the same amount of existing clearing.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this. What you folks are telling us is that I will need a development permit if I want to take down any tree with a diameter of more than 10 inches. And even if the diameter of the tree is less than 10 inches I will still need to replant at least four trees in response, apparently as a consequence of the cruel blow that I have inflicted on my land.

This is just silly. It is out of touch with the reality of environmental protection in the coastal rainforest and out of touch with what I value as the culture of Bowen Island. Your vision of land protection appears to be fundamentally urban. I urge you to put Amendment Bylaw No. 299 on the shelf and give our next council the opportunity to revisit these issues.

A lot has been written about the riot in Vancouver in the aftermath of the Canucks loss, and almost all of this writing has something to offer. It has been noted that a small group of young men were at the epicentre of the riot, and that many other young people stood by and watched as glass was smashed, stores were looted, and cars were set on fire. Many have observed that even those committing criminal offences, wearing Canucks jerseys, were likely hockey fans – just not the kinds of hockey fans that we want to claim as our own.

There has been an understandable and entirely appropriate desire to hold the lawbreakers accountable for the black eye that they have given the city of Vancouver. There have also been many understandable and entirely appropriate displays of support for local police and local governments. As one series of photographs so aptly and sarcastically concluded of the purpose of this revolt, in contrast to those in Somalia, Libya and Egypt, “Our government spent millions of dollars to rent big screen TVs and host a huge party for us!”

What can be learned from this dreadful debacle? The overwhelming majority of those living in the Lower Mainland are disgusted and embarrassed by what went on last Wednesday night. But the response of the last several days has been somewhat encouraging. Some of the perpetrators, identified by our new technologies, have come forward to admit responsibility and express remorse for their actions. This is a positive development, and though they likely represent only a minority of those involved, we should welcome these statements as tentative steps forward, attempts to restore the balance. After the shame and the appropriate punishment, we are better served by giving them the opportunity to demonstrate change than by pursuing a relentless retribution.

It has been argued that more police should have been on the streets, but with a crowd estimated at more than 100,000 and hot spots erupting in many locations, it’s not clear that more enforcement – more police on the streets — would have avoided what we witnessed.

Perhaps a large part of the problem can be found in the specific circumstances of the evening. The demographic was different from the demographic on the streets during the Olympics; these were not families of all age groups, but overwhelmingly young men, out to celebrate (one way or another) the outcome of a team sport, a sport characterized by high emotion, considerable drama – and on this evening, a particularly disappointing loss.

Add to this cocktail a small group of young men who are criminally inclined, and you can begin to recognize that only a small amount of gasoline was needed for combustion.

I should add that in every era of human history and in every jurisdiction in the world today, young men are overwhelmingly responsible for crime. What those of us who study criminology call the “age-crime curve” is found universally: crime is concentrated among young men, begins at about age 15, and typically drops off, fortunately like the Matterhorn, in the early 20s. Virtually nothing that we have done, in any jurisdiction, alters this reality. Some jurisdictions may have less crime by young men and some more, but crime by young men is our norm.

And what is particularly worrying is the phenomenon of young men in groups. In England in the 13^th century the crime rate – and the homicide rate – was about 20 times higher than it is today. Most of the homicides came out of mob violence, where the attackers were difficult to identify; crime was not so much an individual problem as it was a group dynamic.

Last Wednesday night we had a glimpse of this mob violence, fortunately without such extremes. But a part of our culture was reeling out of control, returning to what we see among chimpanzees in the wild. At its worst this kind of group violence can turn to genocide, and we cannot be so complacent as to believe that we are immune from such possibilities – we have had more global examples of genocide in the past century than at any other time in human history.

I will conclude on a much less alarmist and more hopeful note. In 2011 we are worlds away from a commonplace of mob rule in Vancouver; we are lucky to live in what is quite rightly defined as the most livable city in the world. But we should also not be too complacent.  In the worst of circumstances we can too easily mimic the behaviours of groups of chimpanzees in the wild, or an angry mob in 13^th century Britain.

It is instructive to consider the likely impacts of such a proposal. A 2005 study  of seven years of  marijuana cultivation arrests in British Columbia revealed that more than 80 per cent of growers did not have guns or traps at their sites, were not involved in organized crime, and were not involved in  any theft of electricity. In other words, most marijuana cultivation takes place without imposing significant threats upon the surrounding community. Further, and this apparently needs to be said repeatedly – the consumption of cannabis is much less likely to lead to significant harm and premature death than the consumption of the perfectly legal and socially acceptable drugs — alcohol and tobacco — even when rates of use are taken into account.

There is a very real sense in which we – or at least the Tories – are operating without a shred of science on our side. Why are they doing this? The costs of jailing marijuana cultivators will soar into the billions of dollars within a few years – and it will be the provinces, not the federal government, that will have to pay for the construction and operation of these new provincial facilities. Why have the provinces been so silent? Are they looking to create prison industries in rural areas of their jurisdictions, shoring up longstanding unemployment, and potentially converting these voters to their cause? Do they not care about the costs and the consequences of putting thousands of non-violent offenders in jail? Could this money not be better spent on health care, or other more useful collective endeavours?

In the land of the growers — and the land of the users — very little will change. The consumption of cannabis in Canada increased dramatically between 1965 and 1979, and then fell off quite dramatically until the early 1990s, rising again until a few years ago, but never quite hitting the rates of consumption of the late 1970s. These changing patterns of consumption appear, upon careful study and reflection, to have nothing to do with legislative or law enforcement initiatives.

For the growers the six plant minimum will present some interesting choices. More will be at stake, with an increased possibility of imprisonment, and creative and sometimes desperate choices may well be made: increased theft of electricity, and increased arming of some of those involved in the industry, in recognition of the new risks. Police and prosecutors may also be reluctant to bring “mom and pop” marijuana cultivators to court, knowing that they will face at least six months in prison for their horticultural efforts.

There are other possibilities. The setting of the bar at six marijuana plants may produce innovation in the industry. Five marijuana plants will become a more popular norm for cultivation, with growers emulating the emerging European models of cannabis users’ clubs, collectives growing only enough cannabis to meet the needs of their small groupings of adult users.

Whatever happens, we can be confident that neither the price nor the availability of cannabis will be significantly affected by the billions of dollars of our tax dollars that the Harper Conservatives are willing to spend to incarcerate non-violent cannabis entrepreneurs. During the past 50 years, marijuana’s potency has increased and its price has dropped. Ironically, the price of daily use of cannabis is typically cheaper than the price of daily use of alcohol or tobacco, even though cannabis is illegal. I can already hear the Conservative response — this is precisely why we must get tough.

But back here on planet earth, some of us pay attention to history. Getting tough on pot has already been tried — in 1968 more than half of all those convicted of marijuana possession in Canada went to jail for their crime, but marijuana use only continued to increase, hitting its current peak in 1979.  And in the United States a host of luminaries, Republicans and Democrats alike (Pat Robertson and Newt Gingrich among them) are currently looking for ways out of the difficulties that their country created in the mid 1980s by endorsing mandatory minimum terms for drugs. What will convince the Harper government to change its course?  Perhaps we should argue that it is God’s will; urgings that we base our drug policy on science and history have, after all, been met with a disturbing silence.