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The potential legislative change is in the hands of Justice Minister Peter MacKay, who has spoken strongly about the dangers of marijuana use, particularly by young people.

The government has not made a final decision on the proposed change. As well, it isn’t clear – with time running short – if it would introduce a bill in the current Parliament, which ends in June, or make it a campaign promise in the fall election.

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This idea, long supported by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, would represent a small and, on balance, positive step. But the only difference between the “decriminalization” proposal the Conservatives virulently opposed in the 2000s, when the Liberals proposed it, and what the Conservatives are now considering adopting as their own policy is the matter of police discretion. And that sole difference makes it a worse idea.

Police already have discretion — to charge or to look the other way. And we know how they use it. Deliberately or otherwise, they use it inconsistently: In 2012, in hippie haven Tofino, B.C., police laid marijuana charges at a rate of 588 per 100,000; in hippie haven Nelson, B.C., often called Canada’s “pot capital,” the rate was roughly half that. When criminal charges and tickets are totted up, it’s easy to imagine who’s going to get the pointy end of the stick, deliberately or otherwise. A 2002 study of more than 10,000 drug arrests in Toronto found black suspects were far more likely than whites, even after other factors had been accounted for, to be taken in to a police station (rather than released at the scene), and even more likely to be held overnight pending a bail hearing.