“It’s the smell of money,” former Premier WAC Bennett used to say when liberals complained about the stink of pulp mills.

Now, 40 years later, the smell of money from marijuana smoke may be on the way to B.C. from the liberals in California, where voters will decide whether to legalize cannabis.

Organizers are calling it a watershed opportunity that would be the beginning of the end of prohibition in both the U.S. and Canada. They could be right. Once the first domino falls, politicians in every state and every province in Canada won’t want to be left out of the revenue stream.

Consider how politicians have fallen for tax money from the once-evils of gambling. I rest my case.

The marijuana vote in California has little to do with ideology. It’s about a state that is otherwise in terminal debt, hoping to toke its way out of trouble.

There is huge wealth in the production of this relatively tame drug that is being lost to gangs, their turf crimes and needless policing, judicial and prison costs. In B.C., marijuana exports have outstripped the value of the entire lumber industry that WAC so loved. The taxpayer doesn’t get a whiff of the profits.

Under the California initiative, possession of an ounce or less would be legal for anyone over 21. Simple possession charges are seldom laid in B.C. anymore but here is where the California initiative takes a bold step in cutting out the criminal element and cutting in the taxpayer: people can grow marijuana for their own use and taxable retail sales would be allowed.

Advocates say the legalization would raise $1.4 billion.

“We need the tax money,” said Richard Lee, founder of Oaksterdam University, a trade school for marijuana growers in Oakland. “Second, we need the tax savings on police and law enforcement, and have that law enforcement directed towards real crime.”

Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, writing in the in The New York Times, stated the obvious about the failed war on drugs: “Compared with the returns from a traditional career of study and hard work, returns from dealing drugs are tempting to young and old alike. And many, especially the young, are not dissuaded by the bullets that fly so freely in disputes between competing drug dealers - bullets that fly only because dealing drugs is illegal. Al Capone epitomizes our earlier attempt at Prohibition the Crips and Bloods epitomize this one.”

Kelowna RCMP Supt. Bill McKinnon was quoted last week as saying that just with current information, RCMP in the Central Okanagan could bust two grow ops a day for the next two to three months if they could devote enough people to it.

If marijuana were legalized, it wouldn’t be a problem because there would be few, if any, grow ops to bust.

According to Forbes magazine, marijuana is bigger in Canada than wheat, cattle or timber. Annual wholesale value of B.C. Bud is $7 billion in street value and is the province’s largest export.

Maclean’s magazine has reported that there are an estimated 20,000 grow ops in B.C. The next time you read that Kelowna RCMP has busted a grow op, skip the jubilation. It’s just PR to mask the fact we lost this grow op war long ago. (No offence to police officers who are just doing their job).

Almost half of B.C. residents have smoked marijuana. Think about that. Almost half the people in B.C. are criminals under current laws.

Watch for the California vote Nov. 2. If it passes, it will be the thin edge of the wedge toward opening up the business of marijuana in North America as well as delivering a critical blow to organized crime.

Even Gordon Campbell couldn’t resist the ka-ching of HST on marijuana sales.

Who would have thought California could lead the land in common sense?