Roll another one: Meek misses the point

The reliably sage Jim Meek comes a cropper this morning with a column plucking nits off Canada’s medical marijuana policy.

The occasional Herald columnist, Nova Scotia’s best, professes shock that the number of Canadians with federal permission to smoke dope for medicinal purposes has swelled to 10,000. Well, that’s 0.03 percent of Canada’s population, or about the number who support Elvis for Prime Minister—not exactly a blown floodgate. Nor is the other number Meek decries, the 1,400 Canadians who received permission to grow the drug after Ottawa proved incompetent to deliver reliable quality. Along the way, Meek finds one grower who produced more than he was supposed to, and a Nova Scotia welfare recipient seeking financial assistance to grow the pot she needs. Horrors!

Missing from this searching analysis of contradictions, real and faux, in the minutia of medical marijuana policy is any recognition of the central, top level inanity: prohibition of a product autonomous grownups should be able to decide whether to use and why.

All columnists produce duds—check my back catalog. The trouble with this one is it offers succor to the Harper authoritarians as they plot fresh hardship and misery in the failed war on drugs.