cannabisnews.com: Pot PR Goes Up In Smoke





Pot PR Goes Up In Smoke
Posted by CN Staff on May 31, 2003 at 10:30:00 PT
By Rex Murphy
Source: Globe and Mail 
It's ancient history -- possibly before the Cheers era, definitely before Friends -- but there was a time, and it lasted for a long while, when Kraft Dinner was 17 cents a package. And cigarettes were 40 cents for a deck of 20. Kraft Dinner and smokes for little more than half a buck.If we'd had good weather, and of course we didn't -- I summon these reveries from long ago Newfoundland -- it would have been paradise. A good, fat, fresh codfish could be had from the boat for a dime, but I digress.
Those times are no more. Cigarettes now are almost as expensive as a similar volume of platinum, and of the two I am not certain which is more acceptable to smoke. And Kraft Dinner can be bought at certain convenience stores in the city of Toronto for a princely $1.50, a price nearly nine times the earlier one.Kraft Dinner has maintained its cachet. Packaged pasta has prevailed, where nicotine and its sibling tars, so rancorously and at such cost to the Canadian social fabric, have gone the way of anathema.In fact, Kraft Dinner revolves in that all but unobtainable orbit of the Tim Horton doughnut and the A & W Teen Burger. It is one of that great trinity of quick digestibles that have been enrolled as genuine Canadian cultural icons. Hamburgers, macaroni and doughnuts -- Canada, this is your nation.In passing I must note that it is my personal view that the Kraft Dinner we get nowadays, despite the urgent assurances on the package, is not the "classic" of old. The pasta is smaller, and the powdered cheddar in a sack (which, when blended with butter and milk is used to pave over the macaroni), is less thick, less intimate with the little elbows than it used to be. A definite fall-off in my view.I've summoned these reveries, not out of cloying nostalgia, or in obedience to the dread mantra that hails everything from "the good old days" as infallibly superior to an ever-specious present. Not at all.Rather, it was all the talk of pot on Parliament Hill, all that murky doublespeak of "decriminalizing," while insisting pot was still illegal. The weary contortions of the Liberals trying to look really liberal -- going soft on weed is the very amaranth of liberalism -- while not surrendering their equally precious commitment to the nation's health, and of course the well-being of the children.The doublespeak didn't greatly antagonize. Put reefer and Parliament in the same sentence, and linguistic contortions cannot be far behind. Nor did the hypocrisy of a government that has been fundamentalist on one mode of inhaling seeking to add parliamentary respectability to another mode, at least equally obnoxious, twice as smelly, and real hell on the carpet. What really focused my attention during the pot debate, if focus may be allowed on such a topic, wasn't the justice side of the argument, but its health corollary. It was the announcement by Health Minister Anne McLellan that her department was allocating $245-million -- please stare at that figure -- to advertise the dangers of smoking the pot that her colleagues were by implication proclaiming innocuous.There was a time when $1-million was thought to be an immense amount of money. But here is a government, on one of its off days, proposing as a side bar, as a mere sputtering afterthought, to toss 245 million dollars, 245 million, to blunt the portended impact of some of its own most progressive legislation. A quarter of a billion dollars. Enough for 24½ Rolling Stones SARS-relief concerts.When did money cease to mean anything? When did expenditures of hundreds of millions of dollars, merely to deflect the impact of another government program, become so insanely trivial that the amount at stake barely crawled into some newscasts? When did they, meaning the politicians, or the citizenry, become so numb, dare I say narcotized, to such vast expenditures?Was it the estimated price of almost one billion dollars, one thousand million, to construct a useless list of the country's firearms? Was it the other billion dollars that went sluicing through Human Resources and Development Canada? The rhetorical question that screams to be asked is: What are they smoking?I forebear to explore beyond to ask the other blatant question: Does anyone, anyone at all, anywhere, believe that money spent by the government in pursuit of "public service messaging" ever rattled the opinion of anyone whose sentience was greater than a stone's?Hear that sound: It's a quarter of a billion dollars whistling its way to nullity. And so I thought of the days when even 17 cents could supply nourishment and comfort, and those ever-so-long-ago days when a pittance was really a pittance, instead of, as now, a stack of bullion that would make Croesus drool.Rex Murphy is a commentator with CBC-TV's The National and host of CBC Radio One's Cross-Country Checkup.Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)Author: Rex MurphyPublished: Saturday, May 31, 2003 - Page A21 Copyright: 2003 The Globe and Mail CompanyContact: letters globeandmail.caWebsite: http://www.globeandmail.com/Related Articles & Web Sites:CBC: Cross Country Checkuphttp://www.cbc.ca/checkup/Cannabis News Canadian Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htmTimid Half-Measure Will Failhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16460.shtmlU.S. Offers Help with Anti-Drug Campaignhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16446.shtmlA Realistic Revision of The Cannabis Law http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16421.shtml
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Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on June 03, 2003 at 05:26:30 PT:
The ragged and ugly underside to this
Namely, the fact which precious few jouralists dare to upend and look at squarely is the human cost of giving so much money to an entity that thinks it owns you and can do anything it likes to you.Meaning, of course, government.We pay for the handcuffs they lock on our wrists. We pay for the tear gas they spray in our faces. We pay for the nightsticks and stun-guns they use on us. We pay the salaries of brutal sadists to crash into your home, terrorize your family, kill your pets...and then leave laughing when they realize their publicly 'ed-joo-kay-ted' minds misread the warrant and raided the wrong house. Or worse, kill a child through over-reaction caused by adrenaline-tripping anticipation of combat...against their own people.We have paid for the not-so-civil war that has been carried out against us for almost 70 years.Ben Franklin said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. There's been an awful lot of destruction perpetrated against the American people by 'their' government. All paid for by the American people. Taken from your paycheck, every hour of every working day.
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Comment #4 posted by Big Trees on June 01, 2003 at 08:50:14 PT
the jokes on us
they did the spending and we did the paying. if someone just came along a stuck a few million bucks in your pocket how would you spent it? It's much eazier to spend when one does nothing to earn it.
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Comment #3 posted by Lehder on May 31, 2003 at 13:59:54 PT
g w
"...the world is entirely a mystery, all of our lives are gifts from the star filled
   universe, from the infinite we have come, to the infinite we go."How nicely said, GW. The people to be feared, such as drug warriors, are always those who have all the answers. They have no idea how mean and small they are. 
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Comment #2 posted by global_warming on May 31, 2003 at 12:33:44 PT:
Reading between The Lines
Nice sentimental article......Hear that sound: It's a quarter of a billion dollars whistling its way to nullity. And so I thought of the days when even 17 cents could supply nourishment and comfort, and those ever-so-long-ago days when a pittance was really a pittance, instead of, as now, a stack of bullion that would make Croesus drool...Maybe a course in Keynesian economics might illuminate this quandry, but I suspect, that in the end, the relative values of these products (pasta dinner w/cheese) are still worth as much as they ever were..only the numbers have changed..The glimmer of hope that I see is the line.....When did money cease to mean anything? When did expenditures of hundreds of millions of dollars, merely to deflect the impact of another government program, become so insanely trivial that the amount at stake barely crawled into some newscasts? When did they, meaning the politicians, or the citizenry, become so numb, dare I say narcotized, to such vast expenditures?...Here is the question, how did "we the people", here in the US and I have to include most eurocentric countries, allow the "government" to get so big? 
They now control us little people, all the people, they demand, they advertise, they will come to take you away if you dare question them..In my last few days of life, I sadly have started to see, the way the system works,..you pay them and they assure you that you will have your needs filled, remember the keyword here, you pay them...I think that the sooner people mobilize, to vote out the major players, the good old boys, the sooner the people can get back to a normal life,...Of course this raises many questions, starting with an accepatable balloting system, then on to accurate journalism, the "wire", the internet, has given the people a new tool, the forum, a place where accountability may be explored, where accountanilty can be executed.Govermants past and present, have always been based on some kind of authority, it is only when a government strays from its fundemental basis of authority that it collapses or falls.The basis of today's governments are largely based on the authority of mans intellect and the large body of knowledge that has been gained historically.I do not wish to invoke any religion or supernatural causes, but we must try to understand, that the world is entirely a mystery, all of our lives are gifts from the star filled universe, from the infinite we have come, to the infinite we go.Getting back to the jist of this writing effort, "we the people" have the greatest control in our lives and our communities, we must look at our candidates, we must ask the hard questions, we must be willing to stand up and oppose, if needed, the system as it is.Oh, and by the way, I listened to your interview Rex, nicely done, keep up the good work.We can take back our lives, we can take back our countries, from the money grubbing corporate criminals...Remember this, you are not alone, if you are reading this, there are other people like you that share similar thoughts and feelings, we can do this, we can bring peace in this world.Peace
GW
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Comment #1 posted by SoberStoner on May 31, 2003 at 12:07:01 PT
Excellent comparison
I was wondering where he was heading with this article, but I think he very nicely demonstrated the idocy of government spending nowadays.Now if only he took it one step further and broke it down to how much each taxpaying citizen is contributing to that figure from taxes on money that they earned at their job that is now being wasted.SS
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