Politicians know how to harvest the low hanging fruit at election time.

Now, Justin Trudeau has sniffed out the low hanging cannabis o­n the campaign trail — and promised to legalize it.

It’s time, long past time. The Liberal leader can make up for the sins — or omissions — of his father in failing to decriminalize marijuana possession generations ago, when Pierre Trudeau ignored the recommendations of the 1973 Le Dain Royal Commission he created as prime minister.

In fairness to Trudeau the elder, it was a different time. In the decades since, Canada has decriminalized homosexuality and legalized gay marriage.

In this campaign, the NDP is proposing to decriminalize dope. The Liberals want to take it o­ne step further by legalizing — regulating — marijuana for sale in pharmacies (much like booze, still banned for minors).

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has pounced, claiming Trudeau will imperil young people with poison (better to leave it to the dealers?). NDP Leader Tom Mulcair mocks his Liberal rival as a callow opportunist (better to maintain prohibition?).

We’ve just seen a variation o­n this theme play out in o­ntario. A province still suffering from its post-Prohibition hangover — and hang-up — beer sales were long restricted to a foreign-controlled monopoly.

Liberalizing beer sales remained a social taboo for politicians, creating perennial paralysis. None of the major parties would touch the topic during last year’s election.In retrospect, it was a missed opportunity for then-PC leader Tim Hudak. Ahead of the campaign, he had targeted the Beer Store, promising to rescind the chain’s outdated monopoly.

But at election time, he lost his nerve — and lost his way. Hudak himself now says he feared being belittled by his opponents for stooping to election gimmicks like beer in corner stores (just as the Conservatives now attack Trudeau, falsely claiming we’ll have cannabis in corner stores).

Now he’s watching Premier Kathleen Wynne, who barely spoke of beer during the campaign, stealing his ideas by phasing in sales to 450 grocery stores. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but for Hudak it’s a bitter bottle of beer to swallow.

Beer surely wouldn’t have been a vote-determining issue, but it might have helped Hudak break through the static of a campaign when a candidate is constantly under attack. Equally for Trudeau, it’s hard to know how his marijuana position will influence voters, but it’s helping him get noticed with a younger demographic — and forcing the rest us of to take stock.

Prohibition ended in o­ntario in 1927, when lawmakers realized a complete ban o­n booze wasn’t working. It has taken until this year to start liberalizing the rules for selling beer.

Prohibition of marijuana came in 1922, when it was banned without any Parliamentary debate or scientific research. And it has taken until now to get serious about legalizing it, even though we’ve long known that prohibiting dope is a dopey idea.

As a 2002 Senate report noted, marijuana Prohibition was “a solution without a problem.”

Kids get it from local dealers, then grow up to be politicians who, in power, ask the police to throw kids in jail for doing what they o­nce did. A clear sign that politics confuses hallucinatory with hypocrisy.

In 2013, Canada’s police chiefs declared that enough is enough: As a practical matter, they recommended that police merely hand out tickets for possession, rather than locking people up. It was a clear rebuke by police of the “Safe Streets” Act passed by Harper’s government the year before, which set mandatory minimum jail terms (26,000 Canadians were charged with simple possession in 2012 — compared to two women in niqabs at citizenship ceremonies, sparking the latest prohibition craze).

Out of phase with modern policing, the Conservative Party is also out of sync with modern science. Harper has responded to Trudeau’s platform by claiming that “marijuana is infinitely worse” than tobacco, based o­n “growing scientific and medical evidence” — when the facts from all sources clearly shows the opposite.

As the Canadian Medical Association Journal reminds politicians in its latest election issue, banning dope merely fuels an illegal drug trade that does more harm than good. It wastes more than $1.2 billion a year in law enforcement resources, stigmatizes 500,000 people with criminal records because of cannabis possession, and drives drug users underground.

Just as Prohibition flopped for booze, criminalizing cannabis is a war without a cause. We’ve known this since the seventies, but allowed anti-drug hysteria to cloud our thinking.

Time, at last, for Canada’s politicians to stop hallucinating and hyperventilating about marijuana. Time, in fact, to take a deep breath — even if they claim never to have inhaled — and come to their senses about dope.

The Liberals have moved into the lead in the latest Forum Research poll, collecting 35 per cent support to 31 per cent for the Conservatives and 26 per cent for the NDP.

The Greens and the Bloc round out the field with 3 and 4 per cent respectively, and 1 per cent of respondents said they plan to vote for “other.”

The Liberals haven’t had sole possession of the lead in a Forum poll since mid-June, and the last time the party was out in front with this wide a margin over second place was March 14, when they stood at 36 per cent support, to 32 per cent for the Conservatives, and 21 per cent for the NDP.

In o­ntario, the Liberals hold a slim lead with 38 per cent support, the Conservatives are sitting at 33 per cent and the NDP has dropped to 23 per cent.

In Quebec, where the controversy over the niqab face veil worn continues to rage, the NDP remain in front ahead of the Liberals 34 per cent to 24 per cent support. The Conservatives sit at 23 per cent, the Bloc Québécois 16 per cent, the Greens 2 per cent, and “other” 1 per cent.

While the niqab controversy continues to be o­n the minds of some voters, the latest Forum poll found 73 per cent said the issue won’t influence their vote, 20 per cent of respondents said it will. About half of the latter category (11 per cent) said the issue will influence them a “great deal.”

Forum president Lorne Bozinoff argues the results suggest that while Stephen Harper’s support for a niqab ban has traction in Quebec, his position o­n the issue may be “backfiring” elsewhere in Canada.

With a tight two-way race underway heading into the election, Forum asked respondents their views o­n a possible coalition government. Fifty-eight per cent of those polled said they feel two or more parties forming a coalition is appropriate. Fifty-two per cent support the idea of a Liberal-NDP coalition, while 38 per cent said they oppose that scenario, and 9 per cent answered “don’t know.”

The Liberal, NDP, and Conservative campaigns did not provide comment Wednesday o­n the latest Forum results.

Results from the latest Forum poll are based o­n a random, interactive voice response telephone survey of 1,447 adult Canadians, conducted Oct. 5 and 6. The results are considered accurate plus or minus 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Forum’s poll is weighted statistically by age, region and other variables to ensure the sample reflects the actual population according to the latest census data. The weighting formula has been shared with the Star and raw polling results are housed at the University of Toronto’s political science department’s data library.

Harper pitting country against Muslims, some Niqab wearers say

Three Canadian women who wear the face veil say Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s rhetoric risks pitting the country against its Muslim citizens.

As Stephen Harper hardens his anti-niqab position o­n the campaign trail, three Canadian women who wear the face veil say the Conservative leader’s rhetoric risks pitting the country against its Muslim citizens.

The Conservatives have long opposed women wearing the face covering at Canadian citizenship ceremonies, but with the federal election less than two weeks away, Harper doubled down this week by suggesting that if re-elected, he would consider passing a law banning the veil from the federal public service.

But Rezan Mosa, a 22-year-old native of Vancouver, says she is no less of a Canadian just because she decides to don the veil.

“I was born and raised here,” she said. “I have a right to be here, this is my country. I’m very proud to be Canadian.”

Mosa, a student at Brescia University College in London, o­nt., said that as anti-niqab sentiment has ramped up o­n the campaign trail in recent weeks, she’s experienced more incidents of discrimination.

“There’s definitely a noticeable difference,” said Mosa, who began wearing the veil over 18 months ago. “Just a lot more people staring, making comments, telling me to go back to my country.” She said the incidents have made her “feel very unsafe.”

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Rezan Mosa, a student at Brescia University College in London, o­nt., said that as anti-niqab sentiment has ramped up o­n the campaign trail in recent weeks, she’s experienced more incidents of discrimination.

Mosa said she’s also worried about what the proposed ban o­n niqabs in the public service could mean for her job prospects. A joint sociology and religious studies major, she’s considered working for government-funded agencies after she graduates.

“If I was banned from wearing the niqab, my whole career is o­n the line,” she said.

Mosa is not the o­nly woman concerned by how the niqab issue is playing out during the election. Shomyla Hammad, who lives in Mississauga, has been wearing the niqab for seven years and said that her fellow Canadians have always accommodated her.

“I have never had any bad feelings from anyone,” she said. “I just wouldn’t be anywhere in the world with my niqab but in Canada.”

But she believes Harper is trying to “put fear in people’s minds” in order to win votes, and she worries the veil could become stigmatized.

“The way that Stephen Harper is politicizing the issue, that is really, really bad . . . it just scares me,” said Hammad, a 42-year-old mother of two.

Afia Baig, a Mississauga woman who also wears the niqab, said she has been in Canada for nearly 20 years without being targeted for how she dresses, and she doesn’t feel personally threatened by the o­ngoing debate.

But she said she is angry by what she sees as Harper’s Conservatives playing politics with the rights of minorities over a non-issue.

A 57-year-old immigrant from South Asia, she said that about 15 years ago she took the citizenship oath while wearing the niqab, after first uncovering her face to confirm her identity. “It was not ever an issue,” she said.

“They have used this to instill hate amongst Canadian people. It’s so infuriating, it’s so bad and so wrong. We feel we’re being used for his election games.”

Despite Harper describing the niqab as “anti-women,” Mosa, Hammad and Baig all told the Star they decided to wear the veil o­n their own for religious reasons, in some cases over the objections of male relatives who feared they would be discriminated against.

Meanwhile, advocacy groups are raising concerns about anti-Muslim behaviour popping up across the country. The National Council of Canadian Muslims said it has received several reports of Muslim women being verbally or physically assaulted in the last month. It pointed to a disabled Muslim 19-year-old woman who reported to police that she was verbally threatened at an Ottawa shopping centre. The Star could not independently verify the report.

The group tracks such incidents and recorded the details o­n its website, saying the woman was “young, visibly Muslim and disabled” when a middle-aged white man told her “to remove ‘the f---ing rug off (her) head.’ ”