What have they been smoking in Ottawa?
"Urban 20" by Mike Roberts
I got a strange call from building security last week. There was a guy with green-and-red hair, a Hacky-Sack, and a shine in his eyes at the fortress that passes as our reception bay, insisting on hand delivering an envelope to yours truly.
The mail doesn't get delivered in these "monolithic structures" he was insisting.
Nut-bar alert?
The guy who popped up for a chat was anything but - a little dogged in his pursuit, perhaps, but an articulate fella all the same.
Bill C-8 is David Malmo-Levine's nemesis at present. The self-proclaimed "responsible drugpeace activist" wants Canadians to know what a retro-thinking piece of legislation the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act presents.
"The same scare tactics they used back in the '20s and '30s," insists Malmo-Levine. "The senators passed this law without any defendable excuses."
Funny, isn't it - three million Canadians smoke the soft drug called marijuana.
Funny, isn't it - how they're opening city-hall-sponsored marijuana shops in the Netherlands to keep smokers off the streets and away from hard drugs, while here we're raiding hemp stores.
Three hundred Dutch puffers swing through the Pyramid in Bussum every day. Profits fund drug-use education programs.
Here in BC, with marijuana harvest season in front of us, Malmo-Levine is anticipating a major crackdown fueled by C-8.
He thinks the bill stinks. It does not reduce the penalties for possession for minor quantities; it drastically increases police powers of search and seizure; it prohibits medical and industrial uses of the plant; and it streamlines the justice system to allow for more trafficking charges to be laid.
Next week in this space, Malmo-Levine explains the controversial bill and what it means to BC's No.1 cash crop and the people who enjoy "flower smoking."
In the interim, I'd like to hear from readers - pro and con - who question the federal government's war on drugs.
Should we decrim the weed or crack down?
