ALCOHOL IS A HARDER DRUG ON SOCIETY THAN MARIJUANA

I happened upon a bloody fight last weekend in Kelowna.

My wife, four-year old and two-year-old had parked our minivan on
Lawrence Avenue and wandered through City Park.

We were enjoying the park while our six-year-old was with her Sparks
troupe for the afternoon.

Two enthusiastic thumbs up to the city planners who preserved that
piece of paradise. The kids always enjoy themselves there.

As we returned to the van, I noticed two men locked in a fighters'
embrace across the street.,

My guess is tone fellow was in his 50s. The other might have been in
his 20s.

The younger fellow seemed to have the upper hand, but he wasn't taking
any swings. He was just sort of restraining the older fellow, whose
nose was spurting blood.

He had a handful of the older fellow's hair.

I suppose I've lead a sheltered existence. I had never before come
across such a scene.

My immediate reaction was to grab the camcorder I had used to capture
memories of my little ones frolicking in the park.

Perhaps my initial impulse to record the event stemmed from regularly
having to piece together the details of exactly what happened in car
crashes using imperfect eye witness accounts.

I was almost immediately berated by a lady who was walking by. She
said something like "Why don't you call 9-1-1. That's disgusting." She
must have assumed I was enjoying the event.

Her judgmental tone irritated me, particularly because I didn't see
her pulling out her own cell phone. But she had made an excellent
suggestion. I put down the camcorder and called 9-1-1.

I expected to be simply direct the police to the location. Instead, I
was faced with what seemed like a barrage of questions. What was the
urgency in knowing my home address and detailed descriptions of the
fighters?

Seeing the fight escalate from a fighter's embrace to an exchange of
blows, I hung up on the 9-1-1 operator feeling I had to intervene.

In hindsight, I probably should have just put the camcorder back on
and waited for the police to arrive.

I was lucky. My only battle scars were splatters of the older fellow's
blood on my arms.

No aggression was directed at me, and even if it had been, I could
quite easily have gotten out of harm's way.

Both men were quite intoxicated.

My experience last weekend raised a number of potential column
topics-violence in Kelowna's downtown, how to react when you come upon
a fight, the laws of citizen's arrests.

The focus I am going with was narrowed for me the evening of the
event, when I saw a news story about a study that assessed alcohol- a
legally accessible drug more dangerous than other drugs such as
ecstasy and marijuana.

I have no personal knowledge of ecstasy, but I've witnessed the
effects of marijuana and can say with some confidence that the fight I
came upon would never have happened if the participants had shared a
joint instead of a case of beer.

These types of alcohol-induced incidents have the effect of taxing our
police, our hospitals, our courts and our prisons.

Add to that the severe social impacts alcohol has on families and the
economic impacts of alcohol on work productivity and it's no wonder
alcohol was assessed as being dangerous to our society.

There may be serious social concerns about marijuana use as well but
they are not as readily apparent.

The biggest social concerns that jump out at me about marijuana arise
not from the use of the drug but, rather, from the criminal framework
that is required to produce and distribute it.

Those social concerns only exist because our governments have decided
to criminalize that drug.

It is particularly interesting that the use of marijuana for such
medical purposes as chronic pain management has become generally
accepted, to the point that the drug can actually be prescribed by a
doctor.

How does this topic fit in a column entitled Achieving
Justice?

There is something manifestly unjust about the glaring contradiction
that allows a more dangerous drug to flow freely while law enforcement
and other of our society's resources are spent trying to stop the flow
of another drug that is both less dangerous to our health and actually
can offer significant medicinal benefits.

It's not necessarily all that helpful to point out contradictions
without offering solutions.

I don't have the answers.

I'm just a citizen who witnessed a violent manifestation of one of the
many harms of alcohol, and heard of a study that put the contradiction
in how our society regulates the use of drugs front and centre.

This column is intended to provide general information about injury
claims. It is not a substitute for retaining a lawyer to provide legal
advice specifically pertaining to your case. Paul Hergott is a lawyer
with Hergott Law on the Westside. If there are particular issues you
would like discussed in this column, please e-mail Paul directly at:
paul@hlaw.ca.