cannabisnews.com: Reefer Blandness: Pot Goes Mainstream 





Reefer Blandness: Pot Goes Mainstream 
Posted by FoM on October 15, 2000 at 10:20:02 PT
By Mitch Potter, Toronto Star Feature Writer
Source: Toronto Star
It's still not legal, but marijuana has become `respectable'They could fill the SkyDome eight times over. They range from doctors to drywallers, lawyers to librarians, bartenders to bookbinders. To say nothing of poets, priests, politicians, engineers, journalists, cops, students, snowboarders, stockbrokers and, statistically speaking, a 9 per cent slice of virtually every other strata of southern Ontario society. 
They have nothing in common, except this: marijuana. Many are alarmingly young, naive, sometimes even reckless in their explorations of the first flower of youth. But a full 30 per cent of Canada's estimated 2 million recreational tokers are more than 30 years old, replete with the sense of moderation befitting the marriages, mortgages, taxes and kids that often accompany later life. Welcome to the new politics of pot. Once the exclusive domain of peace-loving hippiedom, marijuana now is so mainstream that even the leader of the Canadian Alliance can fess up (to what is still a jailable offence) without fear of electoral backlash. And unlike Bill Clinton, Stockwell Day admits he inhaled, bless his holy-rolling, Pentecostal soul. `Back in the '60s, smoking marijuana was an act of rebellion. Today it may actually be an act of conformity.'``Nobody buys into counter-culture values by smoking marijuana any more. Now it's simply seen as a very mild intoxicant that a large number of people seem to enjoy - one that is not necessarily associated with revolution, anti-war values or some sort of condemnation of capitalist society. ``It's lost all of that rebellious allure - I think, unfortunately. But that's what's creating the increased legitimacy of the intoxicant.'' The culture of marijuana has been around for 12,000 years, but the last 70 of them have been marked by a made-in-the-U.S.A. demonization that lingers still. The Reefer Madness message of insanity and eventual death gave way in the 1980s to the gateway argument of the Reagan-era's War On Drugs. Marijuana itself may not be any more harmful than alcohol, it conceded, but it nevertheless sends youth down the slippery slope toward cocaine and heroin addiction. Those gateway fears have all but evaporated through the sheer critical mass of use without abuse, according to those on the frontlines of the marijuana movement. ``The movement has been incredibly successful in separating the perceptions of marijuana from the pantheon of hard drugs,'' says Toronto filmmaker Ron Mann, whose most recent undertaking, Grass, serves as a scathing and often hilarious indictment of U.S. efforts to stamp out pot over the past four generations. ``They've built a firewall between soft and hard, with marijuana being fairly benign and the other being something the overwhelming majority of pot smokers want nothing to do with. ``Add to that what's happened in the last 10 years. The industrial hemp movement being embraced as an environmental alternative for fibre, the medical marijuana movement taking flight with enormous amounts of research detailing its effectiveness as a relaxant, a pain reliever, anti-nauseant and appetite-enhancer. ``All of it, spread over the Internet for all to see, has demystified a lot of the anti-pot propaganda around the world, to the point where only the United States, in increasing isolation, continues to take the hard-line stance.'' Currently, 71 Canadians are allowed to smoke marijuana legally through medical exemptions granted under Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. But that number is bound to increase in the wake of Ottawa's decision not to challenge the July 31 Ontario Court of Appeal decision that struck down marijuana laws because they don't allow for medicinal use. For a reality check on Ontario's modern-day marijuana culture, one need only stroll into The Friendly Stranger, the new century's answer to those seedy blacklit emporiums once known as head shops. The high-end boutique at 241 Queen St. W. is tailored to yuppie consumption. As pristine as The Gap, the store greets customers with the latest in hemp fashion, while oak-framed glass counters offer a vast range of smoking pipes. Throughout the store, information abounds - books, magazines, brochures. Owner/manager Robin Ellins, 34, says he launched The Friendly Stranger six years ago not to get rich, but rather to advance the cause of decriminalization. But it so happens that he's making money after all, particularly in the past five months since he moved from a second-floor location across Queen to his present street-level site. ``My beginnings were in activism and I'm in this as my lifework,'' says Ellins. ``The idea was to work within the system, to disseminate information and expose how ludicrous the law remains, to do all we could to change Goliath from the inside. ``But the fact is we've become a success en route. It's just not a closet issue any more. We have families from the suburbs coming through. There's a casualness to cannabis culture now that we've never seen before. People from all walks of life are smoking and it's a simple fact that they really aren't concerned about the law.'' Ellins' orderly boutique is playing by the rules, as one might expect in orderly Ontario. At the other end of Canada is the far more aggressive British Columbia hemp movement, where renegade activist/entrepreneur Marc Emery sells seed over the Internet in a high-profile campaign to ``overgrow the government.'' Buoyed by the hype of high-octane ``B.C. Bud'' and a more relaxed attitude toward enforcement against growers, British Columbia has drawn media attention for its burgeoning homegrown industry, with the value of its marijuana crop, both indoor and outdoor, pegged by RCMP estimates at more than $1 billion a year. The headlines haven't gone unnoticed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which has been stepping up its campaign against an army of southbound smugglers. Yet Ellins and others are convinced Ontario's marijuana industry is not far behind B.C.'s in scope and scale. ``B.C. gets the hype, all this talk of `Vansterdam,' but the bud grown in Ontario is just as good,'' says Ellins. ``Yet it's so much more clandestine here, because the penalties for growers are, relatively speaking, applied more severely in Ontario. But who really knows? It's not something Statistics Canada can keep track of.'' Developments in hybrid seed tailored to shorter growing seasons have been a boon to Ontario's outdoor weed farmers, police say. But for every patch dependent on the elements, there's a high-tech indoor garden growing hydroponically and capable of yielding as many as four harvests a year. The larger operations rely upon filtration to erase the pungent smell of ripening, resin-coated marijuana flowers, where pot's psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), resides. Bombarded under metal halide grow lights, such systems suck up hydro. And while police won't discuss investigation techniques, many marijuana growers are convinced their electricity bills are being watched. A spokesperson for Toronto Hydro acknowledged there have been isolated incidents of local marijuana growers tapping directly into the power grid to feed large-scale hydroponic operations. ``It's not something we like to talk about because it's a recipe for electrocution. But yes, there have been taps, attempts to avoid police detection by avoiding big spikes in electricity bills.'' It all adds up to one massive headache for police, who are increasingly frustrated by their unenviable role as enforcers of an ever more blurry mandate. ``The time we spend, the expense of investigation, the court costs - and in the end, even large-scale growers get a slap on the wrist because the crowns don't take it seriously,'' says Toronto police Detective Rick Chase, a leading authority in the force's drug brigades. ``We know, statistically, that people from all walks of society smoke marijuana. And the medical marijuana court challenges mean the sands are shifting under our feet. ``I can't tell you I'm an advocate of decriminalization. But I can say it's incredibly frustrating to invest these kinds of resources, often with no punitive results at the end of the day.'' Police aren't particularly interested in small-scale growers with five plants in the closet. It's the large-scale ``grow-ops'' and their links to organized crime that remain the paramount concern. Young questions whether organized crime has much interest in pot any more, when more clandestine riches are to be had elsewhere in the drug world. ``Thirty years ago, the pot grown in Canada was ditchweed, virtually unsmokable. Everything was imported. Now the RCMP says informally that as much as 80 per cent of what is consumed in this country is grown domestically,'' he says. ``Once you eliminate the need for organized crime, it becomes a very quiet cottage industry, with people from all walks of life growing marijuana to make a small bit of income on the side and selling it to a very small group of friends and acquaintances. It's a peaceful trade, a healthier trade, and we don't have to involve foreign nations.'' At the end of the day, even marijuana's advocates admit that smoke is smoke is smoke, and won't deny the health concerns inherent in inhaling carcinogens. And with recent data from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health showing pot use among Ontario students up once again at 1970s levels - 29.2 per cent of students reporting use in the past year - health concerns are obvious. ``But let's be rational and approach these health concerns for what they are,'' argues Young. ``What I find horrifying is the cowardice of the Baby Boom. If the silent minority of very reputable Canadian citizens would speak publicly on this issue, we might have had a rational change in drug policy 10 years ago.'' Fully half of the estimated 80,000 drug offences in Canada this year will be for simple possession of cannabis. Of those arrested for possession, some 2,000 will be sentenced to jail time, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. ``Those who go to jail are basically guilty of geography,'' says Young. ``They got busted in the wrong small town and appeared before the wrong judge at the wrong time. ``But it's the hundreds of thousands of people who, while they may not go to jail, are walking around with criminal records, that is so horrible.'' Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)Author: Mitch PotterPublished: October 15, 2000Copyright: 2000 The Toronto StarContact: lettertoed thestar.comAddress: One Yonge St., Toronto ON, M5E 1E6Fax: (416) 869-4322Website: http://www.thestar.com/Forum: http://www.thestar.com/editorial/disc_board/Related Articles:Ottawa Won't Appeal Marijuana Ruling http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7203.shtmlCanada a Leaky Sieve in Drug Warhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6929.shtmlOntario Court Says Law Against MJ Unconstitutionalhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6576.shtmlOntario Court of Appeal Upholds Decision http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6571.shtmlCannabisNews Search - Canadahttp://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=Canada 
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Comment #2 posted by freedom fighter on October 15, 2000 at 12:10:11 PT
voting for lesser evil is one of them!
Wasted vote!Kapt. I guess millions do not feel this fear. The "law" ceased to become truth when millions went ahead and toke it up despite the fact they knew it was illegal. In effect, the law became nullified and void when millions said, "So what, I am going to smoke the dobbie." So, I assume that we got a job to do. We are going to educate the world that it is time to change. Each one of us are making the difference, slowly, if so surely, we shall overcome this madness!
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on October 15, 2000 at 11:14:12 PT:
So many people, so much power...and still we fear
So many cannabis users, so much untapped political power...all wasted.Not 'wasted' wasted, but flushed-down-the-toilet wasted. What *couldn't* we do? 70 million in the US alone. 70 million voters sick of being considered 'criminals'. There's more of us than there are of the antis. The antis take their orders from the pols. Which we elect (yes even if you in your lofty disdain, choose not to vote because you are on a 'spiritual path' and consider yourself 'above politics', you've just voted for your continued enslavement by not doing so.) Or in this case, *could* elect.How much of a hint do some of you need? Green, or Blue-and-white, friends; the only *real* choices we have. Anything else just makes your future arresting officer smile a nice big pork-eating, pothead-busting grin.
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