Comments on The Burd Report: Legalise Pot, Not Gambling

If you call pot an intoxicant too, then it certain...

2010-08-21T16:03:50.116-04:00

If you call pot an intoxicant too, then it certainly is capable of being abused. There are people that spend most of their waking hours stoned on pot not that much different than drunks.

Alcohol isn't even thought of as a drug by mos...

2010-08-20T22:50:03.331-04:00

Alcohol isn't even thought of as a drug by most people.

If we call them all intoxicants, and consider that most humans, and some animals, like cats with their catnip, just like to alter their consciousness occasionally, I think we can agree all of them are much the same.

It's all about feeling good.

Unfortunately some of our intoxicants are extremely dangerous physically, and psychologically in their addictive propensities.

Not everybody gets addicted though. Lots of people drink socially, enjoy it, and never have a problem. Others have their lives destroyed by it. Ditto with cocaine, although evidence suggests that crack cocaine is highly addictive.

Marijuana has the distinction of being a take-it-or-leave-it mild intoxicant that most people simply enjoy. No cravings afterwards, no hangovers, no insidiously increasing usage driven by compulsion. And contrary to popular myth perpetrated by Government and its Agents, no uncontrollable urges to try heroin either.

Unfortunately, in our current political climate, standing up to say so is quite dangerous, and explains why the thousands upon thousands of respectable, productive citizens who smoke pot do it behind closed doors. And have done so for many decades.

But is sure is slowing down the movement to legalise the stuff. Maybe California's experience this summer can open up the discussion here.

So is alcohol considered a 'soft" drug?

2010-08-20T10:36:58.299-04:00

So is alcohol considered a
'soft" drug?

Now it is Toronto Mayoral candidate, Ford, going d...

2010-08-19T14:57:46.679-04:00

Now it is Toronto Mayoral candidate, Ford, going down for pot use, amongst other things

Deb O'prah wrote: "Seriously I know of...

2010-08-19T10:47:08.237-04:00
Deb O'prah wrote: "Seriously I know of a person who has been sent to counselling to conquer their marijuana addiction. How ridiculous is that?"

A bank that had employed me ascertained that I needed five one-hour sessions of sensitivity training after a Barbadian woman overheard me say to a Chinese woman, "Look at me. I'm a big slab of mozzarella cheese." The Chinese woman laughed, so did the Jamaican man. We knew each other. The Barbadian woman complained to the Human Resources Dept and I was 'convicted of racist behaviour.

The company where I was sent to get sensitivity training did not know how to deal with it. The counsellor concurred with my estimation that there was no malevolent intent. They sent me back to the company after two hours. The company sent me back to continue with the remaining three hours. Management actually used the word "cure" in reference to the necessity of me completeing the remaining three hours.

Guess what I learned?

Ironically, & with a dash of poetic justice, a couple months later, I busted the Barbadian woman when I overheard her say to another staff member "They behaved like a bunch of retards." She also earned a citation from the HR Dept.

Later still, at a dog and pony show, the VP asked the staff at a theatre if they could hear him at the back, adding, "...sometimes people at the back get gyped with sound..." He was also cited by HR. Anyone want to guess how and on what basis this was a violation of human rights?

The monster begins to eat its own. WATCH YOUR WORDS

"Canadians are a good people. I can think of nothing else to say against them." -- Irving Layton, The Whole Bloody Bird, 1971.

Merklin Muffleaks wrote, "(Have we gone ju...

2010-08-19T10:21:22.886-04:00
Merklin Muffleaks wrote, "(Have we gone just a little nuts in this country regarding pot? I mean just a little maybe....)"

We've also gone nuts with complaints to human rights commissions over every slight. My widdle feelings were hurt. Boo hoo happy father's day Bobby (Daddy) Marley, his feelings would be hurt also if he weren't stoned cold dead.

Grow up Canada. Enjoy our good fortunes.

Or roll one. Look at the terrible things that happened to Pierre Berton, and all he did was inhale the Superb Herb.

Deb O asked "Is it because it's easier to...

2010-08-19T09:38:39.780-04:00
Deb O asked "Is it because it's easier to "treat" than real addictions?

Or are its vicitms just easier and more pleasant to be around than the real, troubled addicts who need help?

Yup and yup to tour questions. Assuming there's a point and a solution to these questions, now, what next?

Hey, when caffeine use is considered an addiction ...

2010-08-19T09:18:41.839-04:00
Hey, when caffeine use is considered an addiction too, what can we expect?

Seriously I know of a person who has been sent to counselling to conquer their marijuana addiction. How ridiculous is that?

When we have dangerous drugs out there, why are we wasting precious dollars curing non existent conditions? Is it because it's easier to "treat" than real addictions?

Or are its vicitms just easier and more pleasant to be around than the real, troubled addicts who need help?

This from this morning's Globe (Aug. 19) &quo...

2010-08-19T08:47:27.303-04:00
This from this morning's Globe (Aug. 19)

"Man Alleges Racism Over Marley Shirt

A man plans to file a human rights complaint against Montreal's La Ronde amusement park after security guards told him to cover up his Bob Marley t-shirt or leave. They said they did not have a problem with Marley's image -just the cluster of marijuana leaves surrounding him. Canadian Press."

Thank goodness for the vigilence of those who patrol our amusement parks selflessly protecting us from subversive and influential t-shirts that could, if left unchecked, destroy the very democracy we've worked so hard to build.

(Have we gone just a little nuts in this country regarding pot? I mean just a little maybe....)

The substance abuse that troubles me most is god a...

2010-08-17T22:52:46.613-04:00
The substance abuse that troubles me most is god abuse. A particularly virulent strain of god abuse currently appears to be on the ascendency with lethal ambitions to achieve supremacy on a global scale. Allah akbarbarian!

It is not the strength necessary of a substance th...

2010-08-17T18:36:42.776-04:00
It is not the strength necessary of a substance that is the issue, it is how someone abuses it. The abuse is the real issue which may make it impossible to deal with. I cannot think of any society through the ages that has ever been able to deal with wide spread substance abuse. Maybe we are not supposed to. Culling the herd?

"Anonymous said... It is sad what substance a...

2010-08-17T09:06:41.292-04:00
"Anonymous said...
It is sad what substance abuse has done to society over time regardless of what the substance was"

I take issue with that statement. It's a little too broad-brush for my liking. It is precisely the individual effects of a given substance we should be looking at -not lumping all substances together such that the strongest and most addictive substance is compared with the mildest and most medicinal. One of the reasons we shouldn't go down that path is that that is the government's job -to scare the living hell out of us. Especially the Harper government but certainly not exclusively.

Ask yourself this, especially if you live in Northumberland County and read either of our superb, probing newspapers: Why is it that every drug bust you read about in Northumberland County is always The Biggest Drug Bust EVER!

Why aren't there any medium-sized busts? And if indeed every drug bust was the biggest drug bust ever, how come I can still manage to get my front door open without ending up knee-deep in pot or ecstacy or oxycontin?

Does this country really need $9-billion worth of new prisons? In my opinion yes, maybe we do. But not for marijuana users. Possibly for Catholic priests -but not for marijuana users, that's for sure.

Posteriority is more likely.

2010-08-16T21:47:20.111-04:00
Posteriority is more likely.

Merk the Mark inhaled some badly cloned BCBud, bur...

2010-08-16T21:08:15.554-04:00
Merk the Mark inhaled some badly cloned BCBud, burned a bit of brain and got buggered up in a 3sum. The old prose-bag wouldn't hork up the green for some good poet, so now he wallows in the redundant trinity of the son, the father, and the unholy smokes.

Now it's only once - -posterity!!

2010-08-16T21:01:14.699-04:00
Now it's only once - -posterity!!

I have no idea why my post appears three times. I ...

2010-08-16T18:30:07.311-04:00
I have no idea why my post appears three times. I can only say it must be because Ben likes it so much and/or because if you don't say things at least three times around here nobody listens anyway.

Fourteen Units of Verse of the Universe of the Ima...

2010-08-16T16:39:24.248-04:00
Fourteen Units of Verse of the Universe of the Imagine Nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry were arrested in Bland Land early yesterday evening on charges of possession of poet for the purpose of trafficking, and being intoxicated on poet in a pubic place.

The Units of Verse admitted to being poet smokers. Preliminary reports indicate that they were agents of laughfluence from various communities in the imagine nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry, allegedly on an outreach program called Give the Bland a Hand Poetry Workshop.

The outreachers were found to have been in possession of an unknown quantity of onomatopoezia, a poemaceautical derivative of poet that condenses the imagination to its primal roots, grunt, groan, and moan alone.

Wally Keeler, cited as a major trafficker of poet, was seen snorting several lines of Irving Layton, 'Whatever Else Poetry is Freedom' before mounting the dias to announce that Bland Land will pay for its mediocrity.

It is sad what substance abuse has done to society...

2010-08-16T16:38:04.627-04:00
It is sad what substance abuse has done to society over time regardless of what the substance was Putting users in jail isn't the answer but getting our Government addicted to the revenue isn't the answer either. The need to escape reality seems to be some kind of primal function.

A couple of months ago, a man named Neev Tapiaro m...

2010-08-16T14:42:09.673-04:00
A couple of months ago, a man named Neev Tapiaro made a delegation before Port Hope council to address concerns over his proposal to establish a legal medical marijuana growing facility north of town. Before Mr. Tapiaro even got to the podium though, Council precluded anything he had to say by attachiong to the front page of the evening's agenda a strongly-worded statement deploring the idea.

I swear, as I sat there, I could hear Merle Haggard creaking his way through "I'm Just An Okie From Muskogee." Port Hope council, to hear their questions after Mr. Tapiaro finally was heard, sounded as if they'd all just come from a special screening of 'Reefer Madness' which they took to be a modern documentary instead of a discredited laughriot.

Suffice to say, like so many other endevours of Port Hope Council, it was not their finest moment. It was, in a word, embarassing.

Remember; we're talking medical marijuana here, sanctioned and licenced by Health Canada. In other words a legal business with the same right to set up shop as McDonald's or Tim Horton's.

Fast forward to about 6 weeks ago when I began smoking pot again after a 10year hiatus. I was at the Vancouver Island Music Festival up in Courtnay where the pot is good, cheap and plentiful and just about everybody is smoking it. But I didn't go back to smoking pot just because of The Vancouver Island Music Festival. No, I went back to pot because I'm probably in the ballpark for a new hip, maybe two. I'd heard that THC, the active ingredient in pot offered relief from arthritic pain. I heard too, years ago, about its medical properties regarding glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and others ailments including relief of chemo-related nausea.

It has had a remarkable effect (though not long lasting) on my hip. It helps me sleep. Mostly though, it makes me laugh my ass off when I think of the word 'oafs' and, for some reason, picture in my mind's eye Port Hope Council. Don't ask me why.

Back down in Victoria, my youngest daughter asked me if I'd like to join her on a bench across Dallas Rd on evening to enjoy a toke and watch the sun go down over the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I noticed people staring at me as they strolled the breakwater and, back at The Surf Motel I asked my daughter if they were alarmed by the open use of dope. "Nah, not out here Dad." she said.

Why are they staring then, I asked.

"It's the can of beer between your legs. They're really uptight about drinking. They couldn't care less about pot though."

Poet Allan Ginsberg, a unit of verse of the univer...

2010-08-16T10:28:29.095-04:00
Poet Allan Ginsberg, a unit of verse of the universe, downtown Manhatten, displayed his cred: POT IS FUN.

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxc20r7OOV1qzuw8oo1_400.jpg

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between"

Comments on The Burd Report: Legalise Pot, Not Gambling

If you call pot an intoxicant too, then it certain...

Alcohol isn't even thought of as a drug by mos...

So is alcohol considered a 'soft" drug?

Now it is Toronto Mayoral candidate, Ford, going d...

Deb O'prah wrote: "Seriously I know of...

Merklin Muffleaks wrote, "(Have we gone ju...

Deb O asked "Is it because it's easier to...

Hey, when caffeine use is considered an addiction ...

This from this morning's Globe (Aug. 19) &quo...

The substance abuse that troubles me most is god a...

It is not the strength necessary of a substance th...

"Anonymous said... It is sad what substance a...

Posteriority is more likely.

Merk the Mark inhaled some badly cloned BCBud, bur...

Now it's only once - -posterity!!

I have no idea why my post appears three times. I ...

Fourteen Units of Verse of the Universe of the Ima...

It is sad what substance abuse has done to society...

A couple of months ago, a man named Neev Tapiaro m...

Poet Allan Ginsberg, a unit of verse of the univer...