The
Hemp
Hating Cult
of Prince
George

by Dan Loehndorf

Fuckin' Hippy! If another country attacked us right now, and tried to invade... You wouldn't do nothin'! You'd just sit there and smoke pot!

The Cult
This was not a line from some 1960's government-funded documentary featuring pious marijuanaphobes who wag frenzied fingers and tongues in support of a drug-free society - and then go home to take a couple Valium and calm down.My friend Drew had been drinking in a pub in northern British Columbia, talking about hemp and its potential as a source of paper and fibreboard, when some hemp-hating prophet of the cult of Believe What They Tell You decided to share his wealth of ignorance with everyone present.

"Fuckin' hippy," the prophet kept mumbling.

Later, while Drew told me about the incident, I couldn't help but wonder why a discussion about hemp would provoke such a response from a local millworker turned evangelist. What did fibreboard and paper have to do with military service? I thought it might involve some strange belief system or symbolism characteristic of the Believe What They Tell You faith.

Intrigued, I decided to investigate further. What is this cult's central dogma? How does it recruit new members? How does it enforce its laws?

A Sighting
The sighting of a cult member had recently been reported at Back to The Garden, the local hemp store in Prince George. One Constable Jewett had been there to threaten Darren Rinaldi, the store's owner, with violating section 462.2 of the cult's Criminal Code. If pro-hemp information was not removed from the shelves within a week, Darren would be charged. It looked like I might have an opportunity to answer some of my questions about this fanatical conspiracy of hemp-hating.

The Visit
I found the store discretely tucked away in a back alley. Its walls, inside and out, were camouflaged with painted trees whose trunks looked weaved together in a fashion reminiscent of Celtic knotwork.

As I parked my car outside the doors, it occurred to me that I was indeed entering a place where nature is worshiped- or at least respected- in a manner that the old Celtic druids could not have disapproved of.

When I entered the store I found that many of the books on the shelves focused entirely on the hemp issue, but there were also books that addressed only environmental issues; books with pictures of unnatural disasters like the Bowron Lake Kill. Here, the environmental benefits of hemp are celebrated.

Darren told me about Jewett's most recent visit as we smoked from my Aquapipe.

"What happened when Constable Jewett came back a week later?" I asked.

"He came in and asked to borrow some books. So I said 'sure' and gave him a copy of High Times, , The Emperor Wears No Clothes, and a hydroponics grow book."

"Did he ever return this material?"

"No... the way the RCMP work in most of these cases is that they walk in without a warrant and seize everything, every piece of stock... if at that point I had said 'Fuck you, get out of here', he could have seized all my stock. I only lost four books, as opposed to a hundred."

Another Clue
Constable Jewett has not returned to Darren's store since then, and Darren counts himself lucky. For my part, I am happy to have uncovered a clue to how the cult keeps its laws: a Crack Force, made up of officials like Constable Jewett, seem to have special dispensation to break the cult's own laws in order to enforce them.

Thus what would have been called "extortion" or "shoplifting" if anyone else had done it is called "borrowing" when a constable of the Crack Force does it. Never mind that the merchandise is not returned. Never mind that section 462.2 of the Criminal Code has been deemed unconstitutional in an Ontario Court, and shouldn't be used to bully honest store-owners anyway.

Another pattern emerges as well. All of the cult members encountered so far have been brainwashed against hemp. They are violent, bullying, and abusive when confronted with even the printed word "hemp". It occurs to me that should one of them actually smell the burning of a joint, they might even become homicidal. Cannabis smokers everywhere are at risk.

The Airhead
The next day I woke up, took a long puff on a roach that I found stuck to one of yesterday's socks, and hiked off in search of more information on the cult. A friendly acquaintance of mine, a member of the Prince George Airshed Management Committee named Greg Doucette, had some information for me. I believed he might know something about the cult's central dogma, and the methods by which they recruit new members.

I arrived at Greg's home and he welcomed me in. He sat just below a "Hemp for Victory" poster and began to tell me about the Airshed Committee's aim to reduce air pollution in the city.

"The committee was formed because Prince George Air is bad. We have really high rates of lung cancer, respiratory disease, bronchial diseases, asthma, and allergies. We are among the worst three polluters in B.C."

I asked him what he personally thinks might be the answer to the bad air produced by pulp mills in Prince George.

"If we produced hemp instead of just wood products in this town, the air quality would improve." he replied.

I lit up my bubble-pipe (it filters out over 90% of the tar). "Puff?"

"Sure ... Processing hemp uses a fifth of the chemicals that processing wood products does. They don't have to chlorinate it the same way; they don't have to produce as many emissions. Also, forests provide our air, and clean it for us... planting hemp could prevent further deforestation."

So why don't people know about the practicality of hemp? It seems that the local media has become an exclusive forum for hemp-hating cult members.

Greg pulled out an article written by Frank Peebles from the Prince George Free Press entitled "Air heads strike back". The article is about the Airshed Committee's latest attempts to raise awareness by wearing WWII gas-masks around town. The article quotes Steve Lamble of the Ministry of the Environment who claims that whenever recommended levels are contravened, the town is put on alert. In the article Lamble also contends that air quality has improved 80% since 1989. As Greg points out, the information in the article is incorrect.

"The air smells better", Greg says, "but that's only because, for the last while, they [the local mills] have been producing SO2 instead of SO4. SO2 doesn't smell bad like SO4, but it produces acid rain and is worse for your lungs."

Greg also reveals that the Ministry of the Environment has no regular policy of alerting the public when pollution levels are higher than normal. "They monitor it and write it down in their reports, but they don't contact the media or get it out to the public in any way on a regular basis."

Peeble's article was filled with misinformation. He got the date of Clean Air Day wrong (it was June 7, not June 3), and all representatives of the Airshed Committee, complain of being misquoted. Even Steve Lamble of the Ministry of the Environment, complains about being misquoted. According to Lamble, he was not even referring to overall air quality levels during his interview with Peeble, only to the levels of one particular chemical.

Ignorant Warfare
Which answers how the hemp-hating cult of Believe What They tell You indoctrinizes new members: the truth is simply kept from them. The cult's central dogma is ignorance. As a result of such ignorance, members of the Airshed Committee (like others who advocate a pro-environmental or pro-hemp stance), have been physically and verbally abused by people who could be characterized as "rednecks". People who, it appears, form a large contingent of the cult's membership.

Just a few days ago, Darren Rinaldi had told me why local workers have nothing to fear from hemp. "The mills in the area don't get enough pulp to work at full capacity. The growing of hemp could supply extra pulp and extra jobs."

But the War on Drugs that this cult has initiated and maintained is not based upon any logic or reasoned principle. It is pure animosity, fueled by fanaticism. A jihad, holy war against the unbelievers. In the past, holy wars like the Crusades have inspired their participants to abhorrent acts of violence. Crusaders sometimes even carried the heads of a whole city's populace, impaled on sticks, into their next battle.

I believe it timely to point out that most of us cannabis smokers are not unbelievers, we simply believe in something else. Personally, when I smoke marijuana, I am sending a silent prayer to the heavens. A prayer that all the smoke from all the joints ever puffed will come together into a giant cloud. And that the rain from that cloud will make everyone in the world stoned. Far too stoned to impale each other's heads on sticks.

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