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This week, Canada may finally have achieved a state of perfect absurdity on marijuana policy. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, an admitted occasional toker, recently broke new ground by supporting outright legalization and regulation — details to be determined — in hopes of putting the gangsters out of business and keeping pot away from kids. So, on Thursday, in Toronto, in a characteristically unsubtle rebuttal, Stephen Harper accused Mr. Trudeau of “promoting marijuana use for our children.”

But the Prime Minister also pledged to “look carefully” at the position of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) that officers should have the option to ticket, rather than arrest, people nabbed for simple possession under 30 grams. Mr. Harper’s statement, too, is groundbreaking.

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The CACP has made that same basic case for at least 15 years. The Le Dain Commission made it in 1972. And it is precisely what the governing Liberals proposed in 2002, and again in 2004, for simple possession between 15 and 30 grams. You can probably guess what Mr. Harper thought of the idea: “ill-considered under any circumstances,” he sniffed in 2004. Now he’s publicly musing about what we back then called “decriminalization,” though the CACP insists that’s not what it proposes.