cannabisnews.com: The Great Marijuana Debate





The Great Marijuana Debate
Posted by CN Staff on December 21, 2003 at 07:13:34 PT
By Tracey Tyler, Legal Affairs Reporter
Source: Toronto Star 
The word "liberty" is scrawled on the blackboard as Alan Young launches into one of his asides. Did you know, he asks his students at the University of Toronto, that commercials for a well-known sexual performance-boosting drug could be illegal?A section of the Criminal Code bans advertising drugs intended to promote sexual virility, he explains. "Don't try telling me they're not promoting virility — the guy's dancing," says Young, the outspoken law professor at the forefront of the crusade to reform Canada's drug laws. 
A decisive moment in the battle is expected Tuesday when the Supreme Court of Canada rules on whether banning recreational pot smoking is unconstitutional. Young is a long-time lawyer for one of three men at the centre of the fight. Under the circumstances, it seems entirely appropriate that Young is getting ready to show a movie called Grass. But first he takes the class through a discussion of other hot-button topics, including assisted suicide, abortion and a nasty case involving a group of amorous blood relatives in Nova Scotia who went to court to challenge the country's incest laws.Young wonders aloud if they didn't have a point about the government butting out of their lives, even though he finds their pastime creepy and "repulsive.""There are enough sexual partners out there, I think, that you can leave the family members alone," he says. "But does the state have the right to ban it?"Young's provocative manner is a hit with students."He's my favourite professor," says Elizabeth Pluss. "He makes it interesting."For Young, 46, pushing boundaries is standard fare.From defending a dominatrix who ran a "bondage bungalow" to a shopkeeper charged with selling "obscene" records, the Harvard-educated, self-described "neurotic" has made a career out of challenging the state's power to use the criminal law to intrude into people's lives — and a name for himself as a controversial scholar and showman. Quite an accomplishment for someone who never wanted a career in law.Young's most recent case was a mixed success. Earlier this fall, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the federal government was unconstitutionally restricting the rights of medical marijuana users and paved the way for large cannabis growing collectives.But the court also recriminalized simple possession.Young hasn't been above some high-profile shenanigans to focus attention on the cause, including leading a "million marijuana march" through downtown Toronto. While he enjoys the entertainment factor, the merry-making usually has a purpose, according to those who know him best.Young is a "natural advocate" and "very bright" academic who thrives on teaching himself and others about the law, says criminal lawyer Marie Henein, a friend and former student.And he is a great educator because he "can connect with any audience" — young people especially, since he has a vast knowledge of pop culture and loves showing it off, says defence lawyer Paul Burstein, one of Young's closest friends.Those teaching skills, in turn, make him a good courtroom lawyer because, in essence, "he is educating the judiciary."But is Young too talented for his own good? "There are those in the profession who have very high regard for Alan" — for the quality of his work, his courtroom results and the countless hours he's devoted to cases free of charge, Burstein says. But some "have very little respect.""With some of them, it's just politics," he says. "They don't like his approach to the whole institution of law. They don't like him rocking the boat."And this book is not going to help."The book he is referring to is Young's newly published Justice Defiled. In it, Young rips apart the entire "criminal justice industrial complex." His most vicious criticism is reserved for law schools, which he calls breeding grounds for "politically correct little bastards."He realizes that exposes him to charges of hypocrisy, since the profession is how he's made his living, but says he wrote the book while he was coming out of a difficult period personally and professionally and considering leaving the law altogether.Within the space of a couple of years, Young's marriage broke up, his sister died of cancer, he was defrauded by a colleague and became the target of a student harassment complaint, which ultimately wasn't pursued. To cope, he took a leave of absence, moved into an apartment with his Belgian Shepherd, Salem, and spent a year studying Japanese flute and Shiatsu massage.For a while he eased the pain by plunging into dozens of minor criminal trials. When he was asked to write a book, it served "as a bit of a purge." In it, he urges ordinary people to "reclaim lost turf" through an alternative justice system, one that would allow them to represent themselves in many cases. They'd "get killed" doing that today because the system is monopolized by a rude and abrasive "knowledge elite" called lawyers, he says.Where has it got us? The state is squandering resources prosecuting cases involving little more than controversial "lifestyle choices" — such as recreational drug use — and not devoting enough attention to serious crimes like home invasions or serial murders, he says. The needs of victims often get overlooked, he adds.Being a lawyer was never Young's ambition.He had always wanted to be a writer, but eventually went to law school, in part, to please his parents.He worked as a law clerk for Chief Justice Bora Laskin at the Supreme Court of Canada and later landed a job with leading criminal lawyer Alan Gold, who advised him that practising law "is a series of lows punctuated by the occasional high."Young says he considered the advice so important he's passed it along to other young lawyers. But it's something he could never accept."Some lawyers will ride a jury acquittal for the rest of the year, but it never worked for me," says Young, who reached a turning point in 1985, while representing one of several men charged in a huge marijuana and hashish smuggling conspiracy. The ringleader was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Young's client got 14 years.Considering people "were going down for two years less a day" for attempted murder, the outcome left Young feeling disillusioned and angry.He escaped into academia. As a professor at Osgoode Hall law school at York University, Young made a speciality out of challenging laws he saw as nothing more than "exercises in moral hygiene." He says he's "seriously independent" by nature and the cases he's taken on have "suited my personality," even though some might consider them on the fringe. "Doing conventional murder and robbery cases largely doesn't change the world."He began to grow dispirited with teaching law in the mid-1990s. Part of the problem, he says, was an atmosphere of political correctness sweeping the school. He also came to believe the faculty valued only academic research and didn't respect his work as a lawyer. For the past four years, he has been on leave from Osgoode and teaching first and third-year criminology students at U of T. Last summer, he was quietly remarried, to a woman named Laura, who contacted him after seeing him on TV. Surprising, he says, since he vowed he would "never remarry." Sort of like how he has vowed to leave the law? "The fact of the matter," says Henein, "is he loves the law."Note: Outspoken law professor at forefront of crusade to reform Canada's pot laws. Made career out of challenging state's power. Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)Author: Tracey Tyler, Legal Affairs Reporter Published: December 21, 2003Copyright: 2003 The Toronto Star Contact: lettertoed thestar.com Website: http://www.thestar.com/ Related Articles & Web Site:Cannabis News Canadian Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htmSupreme Court To Issue Ruling Soon on Pot Law http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17990.shtmlTo Toke or Not To Toke?http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17973.shtmlMarijuana Advocates Get Day in High Courthttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17968.shtml 
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