Personally, I think most long-time readers know what I think. Pot is a $7-billion industry in British Columbia and could be balancing deficits if it were controlled and regulated. But I’m not the one running for Prime Minister. What do the two big honchos think about it?

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, March 15, 2010:

“If I had to tell you as a parent or as someone who has spent his whole life working with young people, the last darn thing I want you to be doing is smoking marijuana,” the federal Liberal leader said.

“I want you to be out there digging a well, digging a ditch, getting a job, raising a family … doing stuff, instead of parking your life on the end of a marijuana cigarette.”

Ignatieff held the town hall-style meeting Monday as part of a cross-country tour leading up to “Canada at 150,” a Liberal-organized conference on where the country should be in 2017 that’s being held later this month.

A number of organizations and interested adults also attended the event.

Noting he likes an occasional drink and having a good time, Ignatieff didn’t seem concerned if his anti-weed stance made him appear conservative.

“Given the things we need to do together, that’s what I think,” he said, adding that legalizing marijuana would create problems in dealings with the U.S. because the drug would remain illegal there.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, March 16, 2010:

Well, it’s a good question. I’m not sure I’ve seen this particular poll. There are different polls on this subject that show different things, but you know, I have to say young children, I guess they’re now… Ben and Rachel are now getting pretty close to 14 and 11, but maybe they’re not that young, but they are at the age where they will increasingly come into contact with drug use, and I guess as a parent this is the last thing I want to see for my kids or anyone else’s children.

You know, I understand that people defend the use of drugs, but that said I think I’ve been very fortunate to live a drug-free life, and I don’t meet many people who’ve led a drug-free life who regret it. Met a lot of people who haven’t, who’ve regretted it. So this is something that we want to encourage obviously for our children, for everybody’s children.

Now, I also want people to understand what we’re really talking about here when we’re talking about the drug trade. You know, when people say focus on violent crime instead of drugs, and there’s lots of crimes a lot worse than casual use of marijuana. But when people are buying from the drug trade, they are not buying from their neighbour. They are buying from international cartels that are involved in unimaginable violence and intimidation and social disaster and catastrophe all across the world. All across the world. You know, and I just wish people would understand that, and not just on drugs. Even when people buy, you know, an illegal carton of cigarettes and they avoid tax, that they really understand the kind of criminal networks that they are supporting, and the damage they do.

Now I know some people say if you just legalized it, you’d get the money and all would be well. But I think that rests on the assumption that somehow drugs are bad because they’re illegal. The reason drugs are illegal is because they are bad. And even if these things were legalized, I can predict with a lot of confidence that these would never be respectable businesses run by respectable people. Because the very nature of the dependency they create, the damage they create, the social upheaval and catastrophe they create, particularly in third world countries… I mean, you look now, you look at Latin America, some of the countries to the south of us, and the damage the drug trade is doing, not just to people’s lives as drug users.

Look at the violence it’s creating in neighbourhoods, the destruction of social systems, of families, of governmental institutions, the corruption of police forces. I mean, these are terrible, terrible organizations, and while I know people have different views, I must admit myself sometimes I’m frustrated by how little impact governments have been able to have on the drug trade internationally.

But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that if we somehow stopped trying to deal with it, it would suddenly turn into a nice, wholesome industry. It will never be that. And I think we all need to understand that, and we all need to make sure our kids not just understand the damage drugs can do to them, but they understand as well the wider social disaster they are contributing to if they, through use of their money, fund organizations that produce and deliver elicit narcotics.

Mr.Harper makes a very convincing argument for taking marijuana out of the hands of criminals and into the regulation of government controlled substances. But then he follows it up with a rather unconvincing argument that marijuana is illegal because it’s “bad”.

Mr.Ignatieff doesn’t seem to mind pot as much, but thinks it leads to “parking your life on the end of a marijuana cigarette.” Which still doesn’t explain why alcohol and alcoholism is still legalized and taxed. Canada has some of the highest rates of taxes on cigarettes and alcohol in the world:

The Federal government collected $1.055 billion from GST and $1.221 billion in excise duties on all alcoholic products in 2004. Provincial governments have a great variety of different sales taxes and levies on alcohol, with widely varying rates between jurisdictions. Provincial sales taxes range from zero to 35% of retail sales price, and collectively generated at least $1.104 billion in 2004. Liquor licensing fees generated a total of $732 million across all provincial and territorial jurisdictions. The single largest source of government revenue, however, comes from the ‘markup’ or profit margin from government monopoly liquor stores, a total of $3.567 billion in 2004. Thus total revenue from the sale of alcohol in Canada in 2004 amounted to $7.678 billion.