What's That Funny Smell?

My Views On Marijuana Law Reform

by Roland Kriewaldt

Canada has recently proposed legalizing marijuana, a move denounced by the Bush administration. This has got me miffed. But let me preface this by saying that I have not smoked a joint in two decades, so I have nothing to gain but to clear the air of hypocrisy.

Bush's Minister of Broad Misleading Claims, John Walters, called pot a "poison" and likened it to crack cocaine. His rants have demonized pot as if it were a weapon of mass destruction. Sorry, but I can't inhale such blatant deception.

First of all, an apparently thorough 1972 Canadian study, initially meant to condemn marijuana, eventually proved the claims of Reefer Madness era propagandists as being out of touch with reality. Pot poses no significant threat when compared to proven poisons including alcohol, cigarettes and the many forms of prescription drugs which alter both mind and body chemistry legally. Add to that the lack of a single death by pot overdose and John Walters' own grasp of reality appears rather tentative at best. In fact, I'd say he was high on something.

Poisons? I don't even want to discuss sulphur and lead emissions from car exhaust, pesticides, herbicides, GenFoods, or firing depleted uranium into foreign dumping grounds.

As for drugs being the source of people's downfall, they are merely a coping mechanism. One has only to witness a young child addicted to sniffing solvents to realize that emotional pain and suffering are the real problem, not drugs. And furthermore, we cannot wipe out desperation and hopelessness with imprisonment and criminal records—they only conceal the real issues, hiding them from public view. Worldwide, addiction is largely associated with low self esteem, economic racism and social inequities. It is our ignorance, fear, greed and apathy that keep us from evolving beyond stereotypical caricatures in a Dickens novel and getting real with the issues of social and spiritual disintegration. But eventually we must. But not by naive and biased legislation.

Both George Bush Jr. and Bill Clinton have proven that nobody is immune to temptation, whether sex or alcohol, or drugs. And let us not forget that the Betty Ford Clinic is a drug detox facility named after the formerly addicted wife of U.S. president Gerald Ford.

America's War On Drugs (or is it an occupation?) has left a lot of casualties and yet there is still no sign of peace or surrender. What people need is help, not a flogging in the public square for succumbing to the temptation of hiding from their pain and suffering, or reality itself. We cannot join hands by building higher fences. Exile is not the philosophy of an enlightened nation.

The real danger to society is not drugs or addiction but those who use their political influence to mislead the public's perception of reality. I see the John Walters types leading the US into a new era of higher fences and increased public floggings. 1950, to be exact. Maybe he should turn on, tune in, and drop out of politics.

P.S. Rent the documentary "Grass" — it's awesome, maaaaan!