West Coast Smoke

Don't be put off by the title "West Coast Smoke." Far from a "High Times" style testimonial to the stoned life, this is actually an engaging anecdotal account of the unusual social accommodations which have developed among pot growers, smokers and law enforcement in the Canadian town of Nelson, British Columbia. The author, small-town newspaper editor Drew Edwards, lets the head shop owners, pot growers, police officers, and criminal defense attorneys speak convincingly for themselves. Readers are free to draw their own conclusions. American readers, in particular, may be in for a major surprise.Though only an hour's drive north of the Idaho border, the Kootenay area of B.C. comes across in Edwards's entertaining account as startlingly different than the U.S. Here's a place where a Charter of Rights actually protects the privacy and property of citizens; where asset forfeiture isn't used to summarily wipe people out; where police and judges actually have discretion rather than doling out multi-decade minimum sentences for drug offenses; and where social opinion holds that growing small amounts of marijuana for personal use, if done discreetly, is not a major threat to society.To an American, a casual remark from a Canadian criminal defense attorney, cited on page 91, is almost beyond belief: "Skogstad says in the couple of hundred marijuana-related cases he's handled while in Nelson - grow ops, possession, trafficking - he's never had a client go to jail - ever." Wow. And there is not the slightest suggestion that these results were obtained by payoffs. In fact, Edwards gives a blow-by-blow account of how one of the more sensational trials proceeded to such a result.Edwards consistently blends in his dry, ironic sense of humor. He describes the bust of a local with a sophisticated grow lab concealed under his carport. When the cops can't find him and start tearing up the place, he pops up like a gopher on the hydraulic lift. "The cop asked him if there was anything down there he should be worried about - booby traps for instance. 'Nothing to be worried about down there unless you're allergic to marijuana,' Rain said. The cop laughed."This highly perceptive and entertaining slice-of-life from the small-town Canadian Rockies deserves a larger audience than the alternative-lifestyle community which the publisher appears to have pitched it to. Anyone who is interested in social policy, drug prohibition, personal liberty and the erosion of the Bill of Rights may find this anecdotal account far more revealing than dry academic studies. U.S. attorneys will be startled by the availability in Canada of defenses based on procedural errors, which are but a memory in the courts of drug gulag."West Coast Smoke" presents, with drama and flair, an image of how American society could look if some of the hard edges were removed, and some of the constitutional "privileges and immunities" of citizens were restored. Read it and laugh; then read it and weep.