cannabisnews.com: T.O. Council's Going To Pot





T.O. Council's Going To Pot
Posted by FoM on October 27, 2001 at 08:21:12 PT
By Zen Ruryk & Brad Honywill -- City Hall Bureau 
Source: Toronto Sun 
Toronto councillors have more than a token appreciation of the marijuana issue, according to a Sun survey that found just over half have smoked pot. A survey of 37 Toronto councillors found that 19 have smoked up at least once in their lives. Eight council members -- including Mayor Mel Lastman -- could not be reached for comment. And just over half the group surveyed -- 20 councillors -- said they support decriminalization. 
The survey was done after the release of a city health department position paper that calls for decriminalization of marijuana possession. Prepared for the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs, the report stipulates that even after marijuana possession is no longer a criminal offence there must be some "legal control framework" to govern pot use, such as a fine. Of the 19 councillors who said they tried the devil weed, only two, Jack Layton and Kyle Rae, still smoke reefers -- and not very often. "I have tried the stuff but I never exhaled," said Layton, a sly allusion to former U.S. president Bill Clinton's famous quote about never inhaling. Layton said he dabbles in doobies "only on the rarest of occasions -- only if I'm at a big party and someone is passing around a 'J', I might have one." He favors decriminalization. "It's quite clear to me that, compared to the lethal consequences of drinking ... I just don't think it's in the same league." Rae said he smoked pot "on occasion," though not in the past year. "It's not something I buy; it's not something I look for." Other councillors said they haven't smoked pot since their teens or college days, which seems to confirm the findings of the health department's position paper. It says marijuana use is widespread, particularly among young people. Of those who opposed decriminalization, several said they found it "hypocritical" for the health department to be clamping down on tobacco smoking at the same time as it is calling on Ottawa to ease up on pot smoking. Councillor Brian Ashton, who said he has never smoked pot, disagrees with the health department. "Number one, it's smoking. Number two, it's a drug that I think actually harms people's health." The position paper notes that some studies have found negative health effects associated with long-term marijuana use, including chronic bronchitis and respiratory cancers. If the position paper is approved Monday, it will be incorporated in the Senate committee's report to the feds next August. Note: Many have tried it and favour decriminalization.Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)Author: Zen Ruryk & Brad Honywill -- City Hall BureauPublished: Saturday, October 27, 2001Copyright: 2001 Canoe Limited Partnership.Contact: editor sunpub.comWebsite: http://www.fyitoronto.com/torsun.shtmlRelated Articles & Web Site:FTE's Canadian Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htmNo Relief from Draconian Pot Lawshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11192.shtmlHandcuffed by Pot Lawhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11148.shtmlActing High Above The Law http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10558.shtml
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Comment #3 posted by Lehder on October 29, 2001 at 13:43:06 PT
creative inventors on marijuana and heavy drugs
Thank you, Spiderman. The government and even many drug legalization proponents often divide marijuana use into two categories: medical and recreational. But there's more. Read all about drugs and modern technology in the "Valley of the Nerds":http://nepenthes.lycaeum.org/Misc/nerdvalley.htmlsome excerpts:If you're looking for a prophet the scientific future, you could do worse than mathematician Ralph Abraham, a shaggy middle-aged professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz...."In the 1960s," he says, "a lot of people on the frontiers of math experimented with psychedelic substances. There was a brief and extremely creative kiss between the community of hippies and top
mathematicians. I know this because I was a purveyor of psychedelics to the mathematical community." Math and acid -- not, one would think, a natural combination. It's like hearing a champion marathon runner credit his success to chain-smoking Camels. I'm confused. The image of a frying egg ("This is your brain on drugs") flashes in my mind's eye. Abraham explains, "To be creative in mathematics, you have to start from a point of total oblivion. Basically, math is revealed in a totally unconscious process in which one is completely ignorant of the social climate. And mathematical advance has always been the motor behind the advancement of
consciousness. What's going on now with dynamical systems theory is at least as big a thing as the invention of the wheel." 
another:If a massive nationwide raid were held today, it would net mathematicians, inventors, technicians and a multitude of free-lance visionaries -- the very people we're counting on to beat out the Japanese, renew a stagnant economy and generally lead us into the MacFuture. Indeed, this corps of turned-on nerds has already helped to change our lives,
providing much of the high-test zeal that has joysticked us from the age of heavy industry into the point-and-click MacPresent of megabytes and mice, shrinking the modern office to the size of a laptop computer and enlarging the laptop computer, via such things as modems and networks, into awalkie-talkie for the global village. I've said it many times: The war on drugs is a war on civilization. It's a war on culture and it's a war on your mind. It's a war of hatred conducted by some of the planet's most mentally backward upon many of the world's most gifted and productive.The government has always been afraid to bust famous creative scientists like Carl Sagan because it could not bear to have a man like him publicly defend himself for personal drug use. The drug war would not survive the publicity of many such mindless persecutions for long. Another example: During the O.J. Simpson trial Kary Mullis was brought to Los Angeles as an expert witness. Mullis is the inventor of the polymerase chain reaction which allows tiny bits of DNA to be quickly doubled and redoubled into useful quantities. Kary Mullis on the O. J. Simpson trial: he knows a lot
about the Trial of the Century because he was almost a witness for the defence. The Dream Team sent emissaries to La Jolla to size up Mullis as an expert witness, and Mullis was more than willing, having established a track-record in deconstructing PCR-DNA work for defendants in other homicide trials. When the inventor of PCR says that the testing protocols are lousy, it tends to carry conviction. The Dream Team told Mullis that the Los Angeles police had botched the DNA work, and Mullis agreed: the people doing the work 'didn't know the chaff from the wheat, or their ass from a hole in the ground'....Mullis was really looking forward to his testimony and reckoned he'd be effective: he knew he had 'a rare talent for cutting through the garbage to the issue'.Unfortunately, he never got his chance. The Dream Team was worried that the prosecution might quiz Mullis about his LSD use (and maybe his encounters with aliens), so they decided not to risk it. Just as well, since he allowed himself to be photographed at a Los Angeles strip-joint on his way out of town.Maybe the Dream Team was worried. Maybe not. Maybe the Dream Team got a phone call from a very worried government. A government worried that a Nobel Prize winner and the spark of a billion-dollar biotechnology industry would boast under oath about his drug use. We'll never know, but we already know enough.http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n13/shap2113.htmIt's about time that Americans find out where their laptops come from, realize that many creative and mentally competent people use marijuana and heavier illegal drugs in their work, and see the drug war for what it is. The very best word for the "war on drugs" is Stupidity. 
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Comment #2 posted by Spiderman on October 29, 2001 at 08:25:22 PT
top, mate
Great post, Lehder. 
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Comment #1 posted by Lehder on October 28, 2001 at 08:27:49 PT
the skill of marijuana smoking 
..."only on the rarest of occasions -- only if I'm at a big party and someone is passing around a 'J', I might have one." ..."on occasion," though not in the past year. "It's not something I buy; it's not something I look for." ... haven't smoked pot since their teens or college days........ widespread, particularly among young people. We hear so many comments like these, reminiscent of Clinton who never inhaled but obviously was stoned probably every day he spent as a student in England. And Al Gore who admits to having tried pot only a very few times all the while his friend from college days has described how Gore was a habitual and paranoid smoker who bought marijuana many times and who ran about the house pulling drapes and bolting doors afraid for his political career were he to be discovered.I'll take the city councillors of Toronto, though, at their words: that 19 of them tried pot a very few times, found little of use in it, and quickly moved on from what they would claim is a childish diversion to their more serious adult responsibilities.But the truth is that the mature and productive use of marijuana is a skill, like any other useful skill, that takes a little practice and even reading and research to learn. Many people derive great benefit from smoking marijuana, but no one ever became a chessmaster by playing an offhand game or two, or a musician by blowing a few sour notes and then tossing the horn away as a juvenile toy that produces only a tune for tin ears.For example: I smoked marijuana for the first time In 1968 after my family physician, citing the LaGuardia Commission report and her own experience, assured me that the dangers had been greatly exaggerated. I wanted to be able to bring first hand knowledge to bear in cautionary discussions with my daughters, ages 18, 20 and 22. As it happened, I found it to be a highly interesting and enjoyable experience, with none of the miserable side effects I had with alcohol when I was a student.I don't recall making a decision to use marijuana to
stimulate creative thinking. It just happened. I spent a lot
of time drawing, writing, reading about philosophy, cosmology, perception, design theory, diagrams, physics, the fourth dimension, and revisiting old favorites, among them Abbot's Flatland and Hesse's Magister Ludi The Bead Game. Reading while stoned, as I flitted from one book to another seemed random and aimless, but in retrospect, appears to have had a hidden goal. The cumulative effect liberated me from ideological constraints, lubricated my imagination and long held assumptions faded as my true interests revealed
themselves to me.
http://www.marijuana-uses.com/examples/siegel.htmSkillful as consumers, the city councillors of Toronto may have been dissatisfied with marijuana because unlike pop tarts or purchased items that need only to be paid for and plugged in, marijuana does not offer instantaneous gratification. On the contrary, using marijuana to its full benefit requires considerable maturity and discipline, as well as information and the intelligence to use it.Here are the reports of sixty-seven mature and productive individuals who have made the small amount of research and application to greatly benefit from smoking marijuana:http://www.marijuana-uses.com/examples/default.htmI am not requiring or even recommending that you should smoke marijuana too: you have every right to remain ignorant of its true effects and uses. But your ignorance is no reason to imprison the sixty-seven people above who know more than you.
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