PUBLIC POT FESTIVAL A SAD DISPLAY

Vancouver's "420 festival" on Sunday in front of the Vancouver Art
Gallery was a sad display of open community contempt for our criminal
laws in Canada. It was an equally sad commentary on the extent to
which an unhealthy drug culture has developed in Vancouver almost as
a matter of course, with our public leadership failing to challenge it.

As I walked along Georgia Street, I observed hundreds of young
people, many of them in their early teens, blatantly flounting the
law and disrespecting their own bodily and mental health by inhaling
the toxic smoke of dried cannabis buds in full public view.

It was startling that only a few hours before almost 60,000 people
gathered on the same street for the annual Sun Run, a public display
of our community's supposed collective commitment to physical health
and well-being.

Do most people fail to see the contradiction between condoning the
use of mind-altering intoxicants while at the same time turning out
en mass to demonstrate our commitment to healthy bodies through
physical fitness?

How can we have civic bylaws being enforced to prevent smoking of
tobacco cigarettes in and around all public buildings, yet our police
stand by and watch teenagers light up huge joints as they lounge on
the steps of the art gallery, less than a metre away from the
building's fresh air intake?

Mind-altering substances do little to sustain a person in their
pursuit of a full and meaningful life, just as sedentary physical
habits do little to sustain a long and happy life.