Wente Part 2

Wente is at it again. http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070823/COWENT23/Columnists/columnists/columnistsNational/2/2/3/
So I fried off another letter.

>>>>>> I know a guy who does a lot of weed. It's not a happy story. He started smoking dope in high school. After university, his friends began working hard and building their careers. He smoked dope instead. His friends got married and had kids. So did he. But he couldn't ever keep a job for long. He had lengthy spells of unemployment. His family was always broke, because he inhaled every cent they had. Eventually his fed-up wife threw him out. Today, well into middle age, he's scraping by somewhere, living in some basement.

So don't tell me marijuana is harmless. Don't tell me marijuana doesn't destroy people and their families. It does.

Antidotes are supposed to make the abstract come alive and in so doing drive home a larger point. This does nothing of the sort. A guy smokes dope. His wife left him. He was unemployed for longs stretches. He lives in a basement. So what? If you think that this somehow brings home the destructive power of pot, you are dreaming. You have not even established a causal relationship. All that you established is that smoking pot did not stop him from presumably graduating from university. Many people, whose world come has come crashing down, or for whom life as not lived to their expectations, turn to drugs and or alcohol to numb the pain. It makes things worse, but it does not mean caused the problem in the first place.

Let me give you an example of how an antidote should work. Unlike marijuana, crack is physically addictive and that is the reason why there are crack whores but not marijuana whores. Anyway, I delay. The following crystallizes, as it were, just how addictive crack can be. When the city salts the roads I have heard of crack addicts inspecting each crystal of salt just on the off hand chance that they might find one to be crack.

>>>>>> The adults can't decide whether pot should be barely illegal, decriminalized, legalized or what. According to many progressive, liberal-minded adults, there's nothing really wrong with pot and the authorities should, like, chill out. Kids hear this message not just from the reefer lobby, but from leading lawyers, academics and newspaper editorial boards. You can scarcely blame them for believing that marijuana is less harmful than obesity, trans fats or lawn spray. As for booze - it's certainly less harmful than booze. Isn't it?

Question: is there a heroin or cocaine or meth lobby too? Look the fact that so many people from a wide swath of society are questioning the status quo should tell you something. Oh and by the way, of course marijuana is less dangerous to than booze. Remember the Senate report. "Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue” http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2002/09/04/pot_senate020904.html How could leave the Liberal senate off the list? What kind of Conservative are you?

>>>>>Well, maybe not. Today's pot is to the stuff I used to inhale as whisky is to beer.

Oh yes potent pot as a generational wide expression of bad faith. I am glad to see you finally accepting the alcohol analogy though. Question: should all alcohol be banned because whisky has a higher alcohol content than beer? Of course not. Just whisky should be banned and beer kept legal and by analogy potent pot should remain illegal but your dad’s marijuana should be legalized.

Anyway, boomers also drank and they no more want their kids drinking than they do smoking pot. So I purpose that potent pot argument be extended to cover alcohol as well. It will now sound something like this. “The beer and pot we drank and smoked is qualitatively different from the “chemically supercharged” booze and pot on the streets today.”

>>>>And if that message is too righteous for you, please recall that cannabis is the lifeblood of your friendly street or biker gang. You know, the ones with guns. Have a nice day.

You are so right. ILLEGAL “cannabis is the lifeblood of your friendly street or biker gang.” I say we change that by legalizing marijuana.