Our own and native weed

[boulder]

The Globe and Mail

 

It's been a great week for Big Weed.

 

I thought Kyoto and its ratification were going to be the last big news out of Ottawa before our diligent parliamentarians retired for Christmas. Putting the planet on the path to repair, arresting the whiplash of drought and flood and the melting of the icecaps -- these are big-ticket items. And I can't wait for the windmills. I see a lot of Holland in our future.

 

But there was enough energy left over even after Kyoto, even after the "terrific achievement" (as Allan Rock would have it) of the gun registry program, to take up the cause of deep inhaling, and consider "relaxing" the nation's pot-possession prohibitions.

 

The idea is to get simple possession off the criminal statutes, and to put an end to the wicked enforcement protocols that saddle the mellow-minded with jail terms and monstrous fines. They're aiming at 30 grams as the ceiling for a reasonable stash.

 

I think it's a great idea. Other than the revival of Hair,or the Second or Third Coming of the Grateful Dead, I can't think of anything more progressive in our continual advance toward peace, order and good government. One nation under Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

 

The Americans will fume, of course, but they're puritans at heart. They fume, we toke -- it's a cultural thing. And once we legalize marijuana, there are all sorts of benefits that have been obscured by our primitive approach to date.

 

Marijuana is a $5-billion industry, according to some of the news reports I've been reading this week. I can't imagine we won't tax marijuana once we legalize it -- harvest the harvest -- and from just this one crop we'll have the revenue for all kinds of worthy social programs. We could scrap the gun registry we have and build a world-class, state-of-the-art one.

 

For a couple of billion, we could probably put GPS devices in the stock of every rifle in the country, and equip it with voice recognition, e-mail capacity, a fax machine and video conferencing technology. I see the day when every duck hunter is his own miniature CN Tower. We not only will know where every rifle is but, should we choose, we'll be able to play Scrabble on-line with any .30-30 from Twillingate to Iqaluit.

 

There are a few wrinkles in the plan; it wouldn't be ointment if there weren't a fly in it. While the current thinking is in the direction of legalizing the possession of marijuana, I haven't heard very much on whether it will be legal to smoke it. Smoking is bad, of course -- uncivil, unclean, pernicious, pestiferous, obnoxious, toxic and untidy. The question is: Is hemp just tobacco in smart dress?

 

Calling all Jesuits! Is smoking a joint "smoking"? Because if it is smoking, then we will have to ban it tout de suite.

 

I'll be among the very first to toss out the family hookah if the legalization of marijuana is the first crack in the windshield of our country's peerless anti-tobacco laws. Canada hasn't spent the past decade devising a legislative and social architecture that is the envy of the world to make smoking a pastime with less panache than grave-robbing, only to see it attacked at the stalk by the liberalization of marijuana. If Mary Jane is in the living room, does du Maurier stay on the sidewalk?

 

There are real perils here as well as subtle questions. But maybe the genius of compromise will rescue us. Maybe there is that beautiful place in the still, quiet centre, that point of perfect equilibrium, where we can signal our approval of marijuana and still exert all our powers to persuade the citizenry not to use it. We've found that point on gambling -- the government runs the lotteries and, with some of the revenue from those lotteries, has done quite wonderful work on gambling addiction. Come to think of it, the taxes on cigarettes finance some of the world's most pungent anti- smoking commercials.

 

So what's the solution to legalizing marijuana? We should make simple possession purely a matter of individual choice, but it should remain illegal to buy it. You may roll your own, but you may not toke.

 

I must confess that, when this session of Parliament started, especially with the Prime Minister caught in the coils of the leadership rebellion, I didn't expect much from it. But any session that unfolded the miracle of the gun registry and started to carve a path toward a sensible pot law leaves me at its end quite breathless with wonder. "

[boe~pimp]

For a couple of billion, we could probably put GPS devices in the stock of every rifle in the country, and equip it with voice recognition, e-mail capacity, a fax machine and video conferencing technology. I see the day when every duck hunter is his own miniature CN Tower. We not only will know where every rifle is but, should we choose, we'll be able to play Scrabble on-line with any .30-30 from Twillingate to Iqaluit.

 

LMFAO! i could just imagine getting a fax through the 243 in the middle of an anual championship shoot.......

[Dr Doug]

People wonder why there is a problem with firearms in society. A fax machine, e-mails etc a firearm in not a fashion accessory.