cannabisnews.com: At Last, The Toke Can Be Told





At Last, The Toke Can Be Told
Posted by CN Staff on July 15, 2002 at 07:58:20 PT
By William Thorsell
Source: Globe and Mail 
You don't want to rat on your friends, but conscience calls: A friend of mine used to smoke pot, a criminal act in Canada. And friends of his used to grow pot for their own convenience and resale to the neighbours. Now that Britain is loosening the reins on all this, and Canada may follow, the awful truth can be told.My friend lived in Edmonton in the early 1970s, sharing a house with some pals on a street lined with former schoolmates and lovers. Other than smoking marijuana, there was no illegal activity among the tribe.
Okay, they probably went over the legal limit on alcohol when driving sometimes, and occasionally shared a beer with someone under 18 at their fabulous dance parties. But Pierre Trudeau had taken the state out of the bedrooms of the nation by then, so socially unapproved sex between two consenting adults in private was no longer a matter for the police. It was bourgeois heaven.Getting a buzz off marijuana was the only real criminal act du jour, and my friends took it quite seriously, because people sometimes ended up in jail for taking a toke. So out came the wet towels.My friends prepared for smoking by drawing the shades and running the bath. They would soak their towels and lay them along the bottom of the doors and window sills, so the scent of pot would not drift into the winter night and the nostrils of Edmonton's perambulating finest. The lights would dim and the music would swell (I am told) as marijuana was passed around, and young men's and women's fancies turned to plots of love in the happy haze of gentle intoxication.(Back at the parents' parties, meanwhile, dads high on Canadian Club were patting bums, and moms soaked in Beefeater gin were slurring insinuations.)Much of the marijuana came from a "farm" across the alley -- the attic of a sexy young couple who tended their crop under lights for pleasure and lucre. My friends would visit the place, climbing up a rope ladder in the hall to marvel (I am told) at the sophisticated agricultural scene.Fluorescent bulbs flooded the attic with appropriate light, while little hoses dripped into trays that incubated plants and led eventually to drying chambers, where mature stalks hung upside down to age and deliver their rewards.It was scandalous.But my friends thrilled at the criminality of it all, while holding the criminality in contempt, and enjoyed their pot as much as they did their Mateus rosé and Bon White (a courageous "wine" produced by the Hudson's Bay Co. and sold in jugs).Mr. Trudeau's government flirted with ending the disarray through recommendations of a royal commission to decriminalize pot, but the law was not officially changed.With Mr. Trudeau's blessing, we entered the land of wink and nod: The police stopped pretending that possession was a major crime -- except when they wanted to bust somebody, which gave the police a lovely degree of arbitrary discretion. And the politicians travelled to that most excellent of locations for them -- the appearance of seeming earnest but being unserious about something that was easier to indulge than accept.So my friends continued to break a law that had lost its balls if not its swagger, and the wet towels were saved for more interesting uses.In Britain last week, Tony Blair tiptoed through the tulips to define possession of pot as a Class C drug, analagous to anabolic steroids and anti-depressants (athletes often need both). If the bobbies wish to raise themselves to prosecute the consumption of marijuana, they can issue the equivalent of a traffic ticket. This places pot in that purgatory of officially acknowledged equivocation, like prostitution, which satisfies the need to express disapproval while admitting impotence in the face of mass enjoyment.My friends tell me they still take a toke from time to time, despite their middle age and the rift in the equation between getting high and having sex. I am told that wondrous insights and silly wonders are still enjoyed under the moonlight with the provocation of pot from time to time.Terrible. But what can you do about your friends -- que sera, sera. You have seen them through so many fillips, foibles and fibrillations over the years. So you stick by them in their criminality, in Canada at least, drawing no police attention to their inhalations, while praying that their exhortations don't wake the neighbours.It would be almost disappointing if Canada were to act sensibly by equating pot to alcohol, thereby depriving my friends of one of the only little thrills remaining to them -- but it should. It's time my friends grew up. William Thorsell is president and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum.Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)Author: William ThorsellPublished: Monday, July 15, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A15Copyright: 2002 The Globe and Mail CompanyContact: letters globeandmail.caWebsite: http://www.globeandmail.ca/Related Articles & Web Site:Canadian Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htmWould Softer Pot Law Stir Wrath of U.S.? http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13401.shtmlCauchon Might Relax Canada's Marijuana Laws http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13397.shtmlIn Canada, Marijuana Possession is Still Illegal http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13376.shtmlPlease Smoke Pot Before You Read This Articlehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13347.shtml
Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help




Comment #2 posted by kaptinemo on July 15, 2002 at 09:00:46 PT:
A prediction:
That we will begin to see more similarly inclined journalistic pieces from the Great White North as more and more Canadians chafe at the DEA interference in Canadian law enforcement vis-a-vis cannabis...and they see the benefits of the Lambeth Experiment spread throughout Great Britain.The Dan Gardner articles were the beginning of the awakening of the Canadian public to the damages caused to their country by the (American) DrugWar. In military terms, they were the volley of an firing squad. Articles like this one may well be the coup de grace to Canadian cannabis prohibition.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #1 posted by goneposthole on July 15, 2002 at 08:27:51 PT
They did grow up
That is why they imbibe in cannabis. They found out what it can do. Had they Adhered to the 'law' prohibiting cannabis, they never would have known.Leave the cannabis plant alone. It ain't hurtin' nobody.
[ Post Comment ]


Post Comment