Canada's Latest Grand Venture Goes to Pot

The Greed Rush: Venture Capital Enters Cannabis 


Canada's Latest Grand Venture Goes to Pot
... and into the pockets of the Greedy

I'm listening to "The Best of Bob Marley" as I write this. His family used his beloved image to make a lot of money, but I just enjoy his music. Especially "Don't Worry Be Happy", recently reprised by Vladimir Putin in reference to "climate change".

I think it's hilarious that medical and political experts are wringing their hands over  implications for the health and well-being of our citizens -- especially the youth -- of Canada's move to legalize pot.  Why is it only now that they talk about a new "marijuana education" program?

Well, it will create jobs for the "experts", so that's good, I guess.

Nat'lNewsWatch: Health Canada’s marijuana education campaign ‘nuanced’, expert says

• ... the planned investment in cannabis public education, awareness and surveillance is more than $100 million over six years. This includes $62.5 million over five years, proposed in last year's federal budget, to support community organizations and Indigenous groups that are educating their communities on the risks associated with cannabis use.

"Nuanced" is not exactly the right word. It's "naive" at best, and disingenuous at worst. 

Where have these "educators" been for the past I-don't-know-how-many years (at least 40) since Mary Jane started going to teen parties? Legalizing pot is merely going to take some of the fun out of it, and quite possibly make it more expensive.

But you can be sure that, like alcohol, it will eventually appear in every Hollywood PG movie and at every up-scale social event. Soon there will be a whole new breed of aficionados of the most sophisticated brands of pot, and gourmet chefs will produce the tastiest, most preferred brownies.

Television will, as always, be the preferred visual conduit for raising awareness of the social aspects of knowing your cannabis.

And yet, the pretend babes in them thar woods "ooh" and "ahh" over what The Guardian calls: Canada's "grand progressive experiment".  See, already it enhances our world-wide social value.

"Experiment", you say? Is this simply a temporary law, just to see how things go?  If so, what's the cut-off date? Will all the ganja pipes be collected if the "experiment" fails?  Dream on.

I can tell you right now, it's no experiment. It's big money, corporate power, and the people who profit will explain away each and every problem it may cause, just as they have with booze, cigarettes, opioid addiction and clerical sexual abuse.

Who do you think has been the strongest push behind the legislation anyway? High school kids? Hardly.

“What’s the impact of marijuana legalization on the opioid crisis?” [asks Dr. Larry Wolk].

• “Does it actually act as a substitute so that people can get off opiates for chronic pain? Is there a positive impact? Or is it a negative impact, because as a result there’s more opiates in the black market? Is [pot] a gateway? We don’t really have an answer.” Guardian

The dear, dissembling doctor has already found a possible use for pot in the medical profession. If Colorado's "top public health official" really doesn't have a clue how this will play out, you have to wonder how he got his job. He talks about the "opioid crisis" as if it just sort of happened all by itself, when it's patently iatrogenic and he knows that, and if he really were a real physician instead of a virtual politician he would admit he already knows the answers to his own questions.

In fact, opioid addiction, like alcoholism, is probably not curable by anyone but the addicted themselves. Users seriously wanting to recover on their own often seek out online fora that offer mutual support. A number of them advocate an anti-diarrhea compound called "Imodium AD" -- a mild form of opioid sold in supermarkets -- for gradual weaning off the hard stuff.

Age limits on the purchase of pot, like band-aids on a mortal wound, will not be any more a deterrent on the use of pot among kids than they are on their use of alcohol.

GlobalNews:

• ... in Ontario (and potentially six other provinces where the drinking age is 19, and it may be tempting for regulators to set the cannabis age there as well), 18-year-olds will fall into a weird grey area. In Ontario’s case, the worst that can happen is that police might take your pot away.

The whole deliberately naive conversation makes me chuckle.  When I was in my early 40's - a very long time ago - I participated in various City Hall committees in my hometown, and at one point found myself helping to organize a televised town hall event on the subject of drug use among school kids. My 18-year-old daughter came along with me to an open general meeting and, when the question was asked of the young people present how many of them had tried marijuana in high school, my sweet, beautiful, pristine offspring raised her hand. That was the first I'd heard of it. I was half proud that she had clearly not become a frequent user, and shocked to hear for the first time that she had attended parties where it was present, along with pills and alcohol.

I had actually had occasion to try pot myself, once, when my kid was about 13 and off on a school field trip. (When she heard about it later, I felt reassured that she was very angry with me even though I had emphasized it was for experimental purposes only.) A friend knew someone who had access to home-grown and who would supervise my first smoke while the other friends, sitting around my dinner table, merely watched and drank wine instead. 

The first thing I noticed was that when I took a sip of coffee I could feel it hit the bottom of my stomach, and I certainly did not want to be that "aware". Then I sat quietly, listening to my guests having a friendly argument about something. Suddenly, I realized I had the definitive answer to the problem they were discussing, but they were so focussed they didn't pay attention to my attempts to interrupt them. Finally I shouted, "Stop! I have the answer!"  So they stopped and looked at me, waiting for my words of wisdom.

But I couldn't remember what I was going to say.

"Go lie on the sofa", one of them said. "Listen to the music on the stereo. Pot enhances music", she said. Nope. Didn't notice any difference at all. That was my one big experience with the joys of Mary Jane, and it turned out that my daughter was about as impressed with it as I was.

Pot, needless to say, has been in use for a long, long time as a recreational drug. Making it legal for sale simply funnels the profits into government and corporate coffers. I don't know why people become hooked and others do not. But it's obvious to everybody that the prohibition of alcohol was  a waste of time and a hopeless misuse of law enforcement budgets, so how has pot's illegal status been any different?  Even medical professionals, licensed to pill, are not immune from the temptation to misuse and sell drugs.

If there is any benefit from the profits of legal marijuana, it should be that a large portion of it is taxed and funnelled into real help for the addicted, not just lip-service and fake hand-wringing, and certainly not barely concealed glee, or worse -- contempt.

But sadly, nobody really cares about drunks and druggies except other drunks and druggies who have managed to get clean. Legal or not, they are as much on their own as they ever were. The hand-wringing over the details of the legislation is a cover for the secret hand-rubbing delight over ownership of brands and profits.

By the way, profiteers rationalize their thievery in the same way that the clergy have in ignoring sexual abuse claims -- it's for the overall good of the wider community.

Image: The Greed Project

• The authors acknowledge that greed has long had a bad reputation, but note that we tend to overcome the taboo by distancing ourselves from the abstract moral aspect of greed.