O Canada: Long, disjointed rant ahead

In case you have been too busy looking for weed to pay attention to the latest bit of nonsense from our fine, Canadian, best-medicare-in-the-world government, well go ahead and light up your fatties and sit down and enjoy reading about this craziness. Our "health minister" Tony Clement must have smoked some bad wampum if he thinks that a brand-new re-packaging of very old and ineffective reefer madness propaganda is a good idea. He is quoted in the Vancouver Sun as saying that:

The government plans a campaign emphasizing the dangers of all illicit drugs in any quantity, he said. "We will discourage young people from thinking there are safe amounts or safe drugs," he said, later telling doctors that the marijuana available today isn't the same as what they might have smoked experimentally during their youth.

They must have gotten their drug information from the drug czar, John Walters. Marijuana is not stronger or more dangerous than it used to be. Saying it over and over again doesn't make it true.

Luckily sensible harm-reduction polices are being supported by the Canadian Medical Association and the provincial NDP health critic. Anyway, my reason for bringing this up is the recent brouhaha calling for a brand-new drug education campaign. The problem is, it isn't brand new at all. It's just a re-packaging of some very old ideas. You know what I mean, the ideas that all use is abuse, marijuana is a gateway drug, there is no safe amount to ingest and marijuana is stronger and more powerful than it used to be. None of these ideas are accurate and they define the pitfalls of our past attempts at drug education. What is wrong with telling kids the truth about drugs? There is nothing wrong with telling kids that marijuana does not cause cancer or schizophrenia. Why is the truth so scary to these people?

Just read some of the prize quotes in this "editorial" that happens to be completely short of any sort of critical analysis.

If the Conservatives have made up their minds against decriminalizing marijuana - an option we continue to favour - the next best solution is to make sure the law is understood, and to inform Canadians of the legal and health consequences of using it.

They then go on to criticize the government if they go ahead and increase the number of citizens they are currently arresting. (OOOPS! They are already increasing the number of possession arrests in Canada.) They also continue onward with the reefer madness propaganda.

Studies have found even a so-called soft drug like marijuana is not entirely harmless. Among some users predisposed to mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, marijuana might heighten the risk of mental-health problems.

If this was true we would be swimming in schizophrenics. But the number of schizophrenics has stayed the same over the years even though the number of marijuana users has gone way up. Could it be that pot isn't as dangerous as its' made out to be? They even go on about an anti-smoking campaign. The problem is they don't explain that there is a huge difference between the health risks of smoking tobacco and the health risks of smoking cannabis. Cannabis does not cause schizophrenia, lung cancer or heart disease. The overdose rate is still zero. If we decide to lie by omission in future anti-drug campaigns, they will fail just like the anti-drug campaigns of yesterday. I remember clearly how I felt when I discovered that most of what I was taught about drugs in school was inaccurate or misleading. We owe our kids better than that.

Speaking of child abuse, I ran across this absolutely terrible letter to the editor written by Peter John Mitchell of the basket-of-puppies institute. Oh so sorry, I meant the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada. He sings the same old song about marijuana causing schizophrenia (it doesn't) and depression.

At least Mitchell has the good sense to mince his words when they are published in the newspaper and read by the general public. But you should go on and take a look at the whacky anti-family ideas espoused by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada on their website. I found these papers on their homepage: A foul screed blaming single mothers for the downfall of humanity and A disgusting homage to child abuse. I wonder if they have an article about beating your wife when she gets out of line. I really don't want to know.

Anyway, if that gets you down, I also found this interesting document on the Swedish governments' web-site. I will have to read it if I get a minute. In the meantime, I will be re-organizing my office and making anti-drug war propaganda in anticipation of the upcoming provincial election. This could be a lot of fun.

On Being Female

I know I am a day late and a dollar short but I have a few thoughts to share that were inspired by yesterday's well-thought posts celebrating International Women's Day. I was especially inspired by this post by George Mason about his conversion to feminism. What really got to me was the following quote:

Social prejudices are even more subtle, if you do not experience them directly. An example form personal experience is in order here. I was prompted to consider, and soon to adopt, feminism after a conversation with a female student in my first term at university. She happened to mention that she found it scary to walk the streets at night. I wasn’t sympathetic, and I told her she was being paranoid and nothing was going to happen to her.

It is crucially important that you understand that I was absolutely confident in this statement. To me, women hardly ever got harassed, to the extent that it was not something to worry about, just as you don’t need to worry about plane crashes, lightning strikes, or axe murderers. Of course, you know, and I soon found out, that this is definitely not the case.

My friend looked right at me and relayed a long list of horrifying personal experiences. Twenty-something total strangers asking her out, persistently, since she was fourteen. A man following her home, so that she had to walk around the block so he wouldn’t know where she lived. Lewd comments. Never knowing whether any of this would progress to something worse, and so always worrying that it might. And all of this happening on a roughly weekly basis.

I can honestly tell you that I have never been so shocked, before or since. Because as a male I never see this happening, let alone have I had anything remotely similar happen to me. I can barely even begin to imagine what it must feel like, and I shan’t even try to describe it here. The point is that this experience, which is to me an incontrovertible reason to be a feminist, is not available to any man, unless he is told about it.

This is the experience of every woman, all for the crime of possessing the "wrong" chromosomes. I have personally experienced rape, threats of rape, abusive relationships, name-calling on the street, pennies thrown at me, groping, carloads of entitled teenage boys driving slowly past while hooting and hollering dirty words that I didn't understand. I even got sexually harassed by a teacher in high school. When I tried to talk about it, way back in the day, kinder people would laugh at me and make bad jokes. The mean ones would accuse me of enjoying the attention, lying or blame me for "giving them the wrong idea". Ha!

These are normal experiences for women. Just because the women in your life don't mention it, doesn't mean it hasn't happened to them.

I never give this a thought, how being female means putting up with a whole lot of garbage, until I read about it on the internet. It's just a fact of life. It doesn't fill me with rage the way that it should. I simply come up with better ways of defending myself, just like every other woman. I deny the impact that this kind of crap has had on my life. When I deliver a pizza at an apartment by myself on a Saturday night, I ignore that nagging fear. Being a woman isn't just menstruation, boobs and flirting with old men for tip money. It's a complicated tangle of social prejudices and experiences.

I am not mentioning this just for the sake of having an internet pity party. I have two girls that are approaching puberty and I would love to think that there is some speech that I can give them or book that they can read that will protect them from the potential horrors of being female. I told them about the time in grade 7 when a boy stood behind me as I was rummaging through my locker and grabbed my boobs. I was outraged and elbowed him in the gut. He hit the floor and never touched me again. It's a funny story but fairly useless in the whole grand scheme of things.

The sad fact is that very few situations can be solved with an elbow to the gut. So what can I tell them? Is there any possible way that I can keep them safe? Or is this all blogular navel-gazing pissing-in-the-wind that amounts to nothing?

"SpongeBob Square Pants is Just SomeGuys' Acid Trip"

"SpongeBob Square Pants is Just SomeGuys' Acid Trip", said my misguided co-worker. "That's why my husband won't let my kids watch SpongeBob."

"WHAT? That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. SpongeBob is the nicest, friendliest and most polite cartoon character EVER. He is the best role model a kid could ever have. If it wasn't for drugs, there wouldn't be any good cartoons."

This earned me a few raised eyebrows and shocked looks. Good, I say. When reefer madness prevents a parent from watching SpongeBob, then you know the world has gone crazy. What is there not to love about SpongeBob? If only everybody could be as nice as SpongeBob and as happy to do well in a low-paying job. He skips happily, he never swears and he always holds Patricks' hands. He could definitely teach me a few things.

More thoughts on the Yorkton Case

*Warning: The following blog post is long and full of potty no-no words and introspection. This may be more relevant as a diary entry to be forgotten in the hard drive files on my computer, in the same section that houses my recipes that I have never used and the fuzzy photographs of my naked children that may one day get me in trouble for harboring child pr0n. Reading this post will cure your insomnia, trust me.

Saskboy posted about this case over at his blog and the discussion that got going in the comments was excellent. This case brings up a lot of issues like drug law reform, legalization of marijuana, mandatory minimum sentencing, prison reform, vigilante justice, the lengths that a parent will go to protect their offspring, and even some deeply disturbing issues related to the infamous Robert Latimer case. I even grocked the nature of my somewhat confrontational style of internet arguing that was finely honed on internet forums plagued with nerds with skin problems. I have to admit that I had difficulty sleeping last night because of all the disturbing ideas that have been running around in my brain. One day they will have to pry my glowing laptop from my fingers before hauling me off to the loony bin. No wonder I don’t have any friends. ;)

I object to vigilante justice for some very obvious reasons. Letting armed thugs unload their weapons on unsuspecting people is wrong under any circumstances. I objected to Saddam's execution for the same reasons. His hanging was surreal, like an episode of South Park. We had school yard bullies taunting the doomed Saddam and shaky footage from a cell-phone that ends up plastered all over the internet despite promises that Saddam's execution would be a private affair. I kept expecting a horned Satan creature to show up and praise the fact that he will be reunited with his lover in hell. And performing it during Eid! If their intention was to turn the Butcher of Baghdad into a martyr, then mission accomplished. Let's get all the Iraqi people to rally around their dead hero who died very bravely, holding up signs and chanting HAIL IRAQ DEATH TO AMERICA! While burning George Bush in effigy. No wonder the world hates America. I had to take a cultural awareness class before I was allowed to work with children and yet you can run a country while having absolutely no respect for a foreign culture. Words can not express my disgust with the entire affair.

I felt this way about a murderous, dirty rotten bastard. So that I would be horrified at the vilification of young James Hayward in the media should surprise nobody who reads my blog or has the privilege of knowing the real me. I was especially disgusted by the way that John Gormley became completely unhinged on the air and referred to Hayward as scum, among many other things. I was so offended I had to shut the radio off. The fact that so many people refuse to see this from the victims' point of view makes me fear for the future of humanity.

But I am certainly not innocent. I had some less than charitable thoughts about Kim Walker. "If I ever get the chance to see that asshole I would beat the fucking crap out of him and spit on him." "I hope Big Bubba stretches out his asshole in jail." "That fucking bastard John Gormley sucks ass. Die in a fire, you fucktarded halfwit!" When it comes to having evil thoughts about my fellow human beings, I am very talented. The internet taught me all about flaming. But here I am bitching about vigilante justice and the insults thrown around about James Hayward, and who am I to judge? What business do I have being judgmental about John Gormley when I am guilty of harboring these thoughts? If I was a Christian I might say that Jesus said "Let the one without sin cast the first stone." But even though I am a dyed in the wool atheist, I can see that the concept of forgiveness is extremely important. Unless humanity can get over this concept that revenge is an appropriate reaction to being hurt or wronged, we are doomed. Doomed I say!

My capacity for violence frightens me sometimes. I am a nice person! I look after children all day long. But yet there was a time when I fantasized about stabbing my ex in the neck while he slept. I was in a stereotypically bad relationship that was worse than jail and with no end in sight. The desire to retaliate against all the pain and hurt was a normal reaction and perfectly understandable. But that certainly didn’t make it acceptable.

I understand exactly how Kim Walker must have felt. He was angry at the system, angry at the Gods that allowed his daughter to become addicted to morphine, angry at James Hayward and angry at the world. Who hasn’t felt that anger?

Yesterday I posted in various places about the message it would send if we gave Kim Walker a light sentence. What I should have realized is this: What message does it send when I use the obnoxious phrase “What message does it send?” Prohibitionists are always talking about the message we would give to children if we legalized drugs. Oh please think of the children, the messages they get are much more important than their health, happiness and safety. Despite the fact that many things far more dangerous than drugs are exposed to children, we must think of the message we send! Then it dawns on me.

Why all this talk of messages? The message that really concerns me is this: James Hayward is a human being. But should punishing Kim Walker really be our highest priority?

I highly disapprove of sending any human being to jail. Jail is full of drugs, disease, slave labor, anal rape, abuse and lessons on how to be a better criminal. Criminals feel angry, resentful and full of revenge during their incarceration. Surely if we want a safe and healthy society, we should start by reforming our unjust and immoral prison system. The only useful function that jails serve is to protect the public, at least until the prisoner is released. The attempts to reform prisoners are laughably inept. When I feel this way about our criminal justice system, why am I so worried about the message being sent by a light sentence for Kim Walker? Am I so blinded by my anger at the denial of James Hayward’s humanity that I have temporarily forgotten what my own values are?

I am very guilty of a contradiction. Here I am advocating for Kim Walker to be locked up in jail for a very long time and I highly disapprove of our corrupt prison gulags. Our natural human desire to punish the wicked keeps people from seeing that the way we treat prisoners impacts our entire society and way of life. Condoning violence in any situation is completely unacceptable. Until we can all overcome our desire to punish people that have wronged us, and who among us hasn’t been wronged, humanity is doomed to war, violence and perpetual strife.

Why we need a War on Pop

Did you know that drinking one pop a day will lead to a weight gain of fifteen pounds per year? Did you know that increased pop consumption leads to type 2 diabetes and obesity? Did you know that diabetes leads to impotence? Clearly we need to put an image on pop cans alluding to failed boners, just like the labels Health Canada put on cigarette packaging. Diabetes also leads to blindness, amputations and kidney damage. Pop will leach the calcium right out of your bones and lead to bone fractures.

Did you know that the Big Pop companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi are notorious for marketing to children? They even put pop machines in schools! Do we really want our children, the future of our country, to fall victim to the depravities of sugar addiction? Won't someone PLEEEZ think of the children? Stop letting Big Soda inundate our children with advertising right in the schools. Clearly we have allowed the soda cartel to lead to death and destruction for too long. It is time we acted decisively and shut down every pop company that is marketing its' filth to our children. Let soda fountains, Coca-Cola billboards, pop machines and all objects with advertising for Big Cola be piled up in the Town Square and set alight. Nothing is too good for our children! Don't let the conspiracy to keep the public uneducated about the harms of Pop go unpunished.

Ban Pop!

How to Make Drugs Boring, In Five Simple Steps

I was thinking about this idea, that keeping drugs illegal and unregulated adds to their appeal to young, foolish impressionable teenagers. I agree with that whole heartedly. I recall being treated to an anti-drug presentation put on by the RCMP when I was in the seventh grade. The RCMP lectured us about the dangers of drugs that noe of us were exposed to like marijuana and LSD. I impressed the hell out of my classmates by declaring that "I know what marijuana smells like!" whilst strutting around. Meanwhile, nobody said anything about the legal drugs that we were experimenting with at the ripe old age of twelve, such as tobacco and alcohol. Maybe they had the same mindset as groups such as The Drug Prevention Network of Canada, that all use of illegal drugs is abuse and some use of legal drugs is acceptable.

The RCMP came and lectured us impressionable young'uns and brought us glass cases full of drugs and drug paraphanelia to admire. I saw little tabs of acid with pictures of cartoon characters on them, proof that drug dealers were targetting children. I saw joints rolled up in pretty, colorful paper. I listened as the police informed us that passing a joint to your friend was trafficking and would result in us being put in jail for a very, very long time. This all had the effect of making illegal drugs seem very cool!

I do believe that encouraging teenagers to stay drug free is a worthy goal. I think that there should be a sixth step added to the "How to Make Drugs Boring" List.

6. Show Respected Adults Using Drugs*

If most teachers were seen using a bong, it wouldn't seem quite so cool and rebellious anymore.

In light of that fact, maybe I should make a youTube movie of me smoking a joint. There is nothing more uncool than the sight of me smoking. If that doesn't stop the little punks from smoking weed, nothing will.

* Assuming that I am a respected adult, of course.

Not Much Better than DARE

Public education, while beneficial to society, is a subject which causes me a great deal of consternation. Without a doubt it is an institution which has improved with the passage of time thanks to some hard-working individuals in our community. I am eternally grateful to the public educators that saw bullying as an issue which has the potential to ruin education for every student in the school system. The seven virtues are now taught in elementary schools system-wide in Saskatoon. When I was in kindergarten I remember being face-washed every recess by older kids. Then when I reached the ripe-old age of nine I exacted revenge on an unsuspecting kindergartener, thus perpetrating the cycle of violence in the playground. I remember feeling pangs of guilt about this type of behaviour, but I knew in my little forth grade heart that bullying was no big deal. I am grateful that in comparison to my grade-school experiences my children have been relatively untouched by daily aggression and unrelenting bullying.

However, being an opinionated know-it-all school marm is not easy when there are still so many things wrong with the school system. For example, in the early part of this week I had the misfortune of sitting through an absolutely terrible bit of reefer madness indoctrination presented in a public school classroom and incorrectly labeled as "drug education".

A police officer accompanied by two handsome and charming young men came into the classroom and detailed their experiences talking to the homeless substance abusers they encountered while on the infamous East Hastings Street in Vancouver. They talked about desperate homeless people that will do anything for their next fix. These people were living in unimaginable filth, stealing, and prostituting and living only for their next dose of coke, heroine or morphine. They are homeless and live in back-alleys, full of urine, feces and used needles.

The police officer was not in uniform, although he chose to wear his gun. I should have assured him that the children aren't THAT bad. He talked about how the bad guys always get caught. The handsome young dudes talked about the numbers of dealers on the street and the fact that there is nothing the police can do about it, completely contradicting what the police officer had previously stated.

Now before I go on and tell you about the absolutely horrible hair-raising part of this program I want to make something perfectly clear. I have no problem with telling children about the uglier parts of real life. There is nothing wrong with teaching children about homelessness, drug addiction and poverty in an honest way. What I do have a problem with is the lies and nonsense told to this room full of impressionable school children by supposedly trustworthy authority figures.

The police officer said, "These drug dealers do not care about you or who they destroy. They will get you hooked and all they care about is your money. People start by drinking beer and smoking pot and the next thing you know they are doing needles."

Would any self-respecting teacher teach their students the discounted gateway theory? I certainly hope not. The gateway theory has been roundly debunked and there is no excuse for teaching this trash to children.

I have a different scenario that the police officer and all police officers everywhere should consider. The black market supply of drugs is irregular. It isn't like a liquor board store. Your friendly neighborhood drug dealer may run out of your drug of choice (in this case marijuana) and may offer you a stronger alternative such as cocaine, heroin or the much-feared meth. While I realize that teaching children the futility of the war on drugs may be inappropriate, I do not see how anybody can defend or justify telling kids that pot and beer always leads to harder drugs. This is unscientific garbage that should not be taught to kids!

Here is another thing to consider. I know that the high schools in this city are literally awash with marijuana. If you know where to look I can guarantee that you will find stoned kids in class. I have seen kids smoking pot, I have smelled it in communication books, on the jackets of pre-schoolers and I have smelled the cloud of marijuana around the groups of Goth kids as they walk past me in the hallway. Kids love their dope. While I do not in any way condone or approve of this behaviour, I do realize it exists. I also know that these kids sat through (and ignored) the very same reefer madness indoctrination that I witnessed this week. And I know that the majority of them are not going to become homeless, unwashed, prostituting, thieving, needle-sharing drug addicts.

Why do you think that is? Maybe these kids have an older brother or sister, parent, kokum, mooshum, auntie or uncle that smokes marijuana and they know firsthand that it is a relatively benign substance. I also hate to think what a terrible thing it is to teach inaccuracies to children about marijuana. What if they find out that marijuana has been unfairly demonized and then come to the conclusion that the school system lied about meth too? Horrors!

So yes, I do like public education but the continued reefer madness indoctrination is something that I have a HUGE problem with. I hated sitting through that entire presentation with my thumb up my ass, feeling helpless against the onslaught of bullshit. I wanted to ask a question or make a comment that would let everybody know that I think this presentation is full of evil wrongness but an appropriate comment failed me, until later. Then I realized I should have asked the police officer innocently, "So do all the drug dealers go to jail?" What could he possibly have said in response to that?

Of course, teaching kids the truth about marijuana, that it is about as addictive as caffeine, kills less people than stingrays, and does not cause cancer, may actually make people feel A-OK about using marijuana and pretty pissed about the War on Some Drugs. And we simply can't allow that to happen!

Mayerthorpe

Mayerthorpe was home to the tragic death of four RCMP officers March 3, 2005. James Roszko gunned down the officers after they came to his farm to investigate his illegal activities. Roszko was running a "chop-shop" and a marijuana grow-op. It was a well-known fact in the community that Roszko was an extremely violent individual with an extensive criminal record and untreated mental illness.

In the days following this tragedy we had the predictable knee-jerk reactions. The calls for cracking down on grow-ops, more police and a "crackdown" on violent crime including mandatory minimum sentencing.

And we have the absolute asshats that take advantage of a grieving and shocked public to push their personal political agendas.

Colleen Myrol, the mother of one of the slain officers, made a statement that spoke to the whole country's grief, and our deep common desire to strike back for the loss of these four young men. "It is time that our government take a stand on evil," she said. "It is time to take our liberal-minded attitude to task. Prime Minister Paul Martin, we depend on you and we expect you to change the laws and give the courts real power."

Others, like Liberal MP Dan McTeague, were even more explicit. Pointing to a proposed marijuana bill currently before Parliament that would, among other things, decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot, he called for that legislation to be rewritten to include a minimum sentence of four years for those convicted of running marijuana grow ops. "This has gone too far," he said. "We have legislation that may have the unintended effect of increasing marijuana grow operations. I think it's now time for Parliament to target marijuana grow operations." Those sentiments were echoed by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Professional Police Association, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, among others.

link

I know a simple way to eliminate grow-ops. Legalize marijuana and allow people to grow small amounts. Even allowing people to grow three plants to a household would have a significant impact on grow-ops. I would never buy another bag of weed if I could grow it myself without risking jail time and a criminal record. Another awesome idea is allowing full legalization and sale of a regulated product in the liquor store. Nobody would spend the time and money that is required to maintain a highly inefficient indoor grow-op in a legal market. Saskatchewan has very long days and a lot of sunshine. We could be known worldwide for high-quality marijuana if
any of our politicians had any courage. Instead we have Liberal MP's demanding that we piss away more of our tax dollars to impliment stratgies that have no impact on crime rates or drug use.

Targeting grow-ops sounds like a great idea to a lot of people that have been indoctrinated by the media and the school system to fear and loathe marijuana. After all, we aren't punishing small-time users, we are going after drug pushers. Except that small-time users aren't going to give up their weed. For those of us that think that a finely rolled joint of Jack Herer is the best way to end an exhausting day, shutting down grow-ops accomplishes nothing. As long as there are people like me that love the demon weed there are going to be people supplying it. For every grow-op you shut down, a new one starts up to take its' place. Cracking down on grow-ops attacks people like me.

Did Liberal MP Dan McTeague and company do their homework? Did they read the Senate Report? Obviously not or they wouldn't be pandering to the publics' fears in order to push their misguided agenda.

The needless deaths of the RCMP officers was a tragedy. James Roszko was a violent whackjob that should have been institutionalized and his own father was afraid of him. If marijuana was a legal and government regulated substance, Roszko would not have been growing it. The RCMP would not have conducted an illegal search of Rozsko's property. But he would still have had a chop-shop and he still would have been a violent cop-hater with a gun.

I hope one day I can run for office and educate people about the harm caused by the War on Some Drugs. I would like to be a politician that does not sell-out her morals or abuse the publics' fear and grief.

Luckily, some people came to their senses. What a relief!