The most chilled protest ever

Walking down Avenue Road towards Bloor street today, past the Park Hyatt, the Four Seasons, a Rolls Royce dealership, and other such gathering points for Toronto's rich, I smelled marijuana smoke. I passed it off as nothing more than a bit unusual for that part of town until it started getting stronger and stronger, and became matched with the sounds of a lot of people.

As I came to Bloor Street, I witnessed something very strange. Hundreds of people marching, flags waving, even a parade float - all protesting laws against marijuana use. But what was strangest was that, in a country where marijuana is still illegal, these people were smoking openly, and the police were standing by, stopping traffic and closing down one of the busiest streets in Toronto so that the protest could continue. Water pipes, joints, even a massive cloud of marijuana smoke coming from the float. There were amused and supportive smiles and shouts and car horns honking from passers by. And of course some people not so supportive - I saw a couple women covering their mouths with scarves as they walked by - I suppose not wanting a second-hand-high.

It raised a quandry for me. On the one hand, I tend to agree that marijuana legalization makes sense. It seems awfully strange to be imprisoning someone for the sale or use of a substance that, in all dimensions that I'm aware of, causes far less social, physical, and psychological harm than alcohol. And I think the 'entry way drug' argument certainly lacks rigour. Alcohol could just as easily be labelled an entry way drug to marijuana as marijuana is labelled as such for harder drugs (and more than just stoners consider alcohol a 'harder' drug than cannabis). Making the drug illegal only leads people to interact with the networks that sell other illegal drugs in order to purchase it. It is always a bit funny for me (until it becomes sad at least), to hear someone state proudly 'I don't do drugs' only to see them four shots later being loud and agressive, eight shots later trying to coordinate their limbs as they seek to mate with anything that moves, and twelve shots later frantically trying to find their way to a toilet to expel the poison in their system.

But, despite this, marijuana is still illegal. In a liberal democracy, we tolerate and encourage dissent but our law making processes are the means by which we effect systemic change. Allowing illegal activity to happen (ie - the police standing by and observing hundreds of people smoke up) seems to circumvent or nullify the laws, and weaken the channels by which we manifest our collective will. Who makes this decision? In which cases is it okay to suspend enforcement of the law? Does this strengthen or weaken the power of civil disobedience? Is it okay to create small moments in time when society can experiment or express itself in a way inconsistent with the law?

Although I am fine with this particular instance of suspension of the law, I am not sure how appropriate it is to create a precedent for police to stand by and observe - even protect - the outright violation of the law. The protest could just as easily have happened without the marijuana use (although perhaps the attendance would have been a bit less!), and escalated forms of civil disobedience, when met with the enforcement of the law, would perhaps have made an even stronger point.