DOPE, DIRT: GOV'T CAN'T GET IT RIGHT ANYHOW

Today in our series "Could Government Be More Useless?" we follow up
yesterday's conclusion "Hard to Imagine" with the epilogue "So Which
Government, Federal or Provincial, is More Useless?"

Consider the following comparison of two actual news events this week.

TRUE NEWS ITEM A: Marijuana grown by the federal government is so bad that
a third of the patients with medical approval to smoke it have sent back
the pot, says an advocate for medicinal cannabis.

Phillippe Lucas told Canadian Press that tests commissioned by his group,
Canadians for Safe Access, found the medicinal marijuana to be only half as
strong as the federal government claims and, in many cases, ineffective
against pain. Documents he obtained through a federal access to information
request indicate 29 of 92 approved users have returned or cancelled their
orders.

"Visibly, it's horrible," Lucas said. "There's visible stock and stem and
it's ground too fine to actually roll so you're forced to use it in a pipe
and when you do it burns very black with dark, acrid ash."

NEWS ITEM B: Bagged dredgings handed out as souvenirs of Wascana Lake's
historic deepening are less than 100 per cent pure.

Hundreds of families at a lakeside ceremony March 28 took home the keepsake
samples of earth, plastic bags of dirt most believed was scraped from the
creek bed while dams held back the waters. No one was told otherwise.

Challenged this week by the Opposition Saskatchewan Party, the provincial
government acknowledged that mixed into the genuine Wascana clay, mud,
decayed algae and goose poop was foreign sand, originally hauled in from a
pit near Findlater for use during the dig.

"You can't put alluvian in a bag and hand it out because this is the
rotting material from the bottom of the lake," said Deb Higgins, minister
for the Saskatchewan Property Management Corp. "There was sand that was
mixed in to make it easier to get into the bags."

So there you have it. Goverments in action. The useless bag of dirt versus
the useless bag of dope.

Let us compare and contrast further.

Both came from underground operations, albeit both legal. On one hand, we
have Regina, and an excavation to set Wascana Lake back down below the
ground level where all bodies of water belong, a joint project of the
municipal, provincial and federal governments. On the other hand, we have
Flin Flon, and an abandoned underground mine in which a company from
Saskatoon working on a federal contract grows medicinal-grade pot, another
- -- thaaaat's right -- "joint" project.

In either case, it is obvious now that government stepped in where the job
called for a man: in the backyard, behind the hedge where nobody ever
looks, be the man a guy of 17 years (grow the pot) or a guy of 17 months
(play in the dirt).

Saskatchewan is nationally renowned for its rich soils, yet provincial
bureaucrats in Regina misrepresented common dirt. Whereas federal
bureaucrats allegedly misrepresented common pot, even though Ottawa is
nationally renowned for its rich dopes.

Agriculturally, the two substances, one mineral and the other vegetable,
could not be more different. Pot farmers need dirt more than dirt farmers
need pot (with the exception of making sense from federal-provincial
agricultural policies, in which case: vice-versa).

It is said that a German shepherd working for the police drug squad can
identify pure marijuana with one sniff of the open bag. If Wascana Lake
dredgings were pure, one sniff of the open bag would kill a German shepherd.

The Flin Flon project cost taxpayers $5.5 million over five years, or about
$16,000 an ounce for the marijuana so far produced, according to the
activist Lucus. The Wascana project had a budget of $18 million. I do not
know the private price for marijuana on the street and haven't the foggiest
first clue how to calculate the unit price per bag of private Saskatchewan
dirt from, say, $60,000 a quarter, but, listen, if pot is your bag, and if
soil is your bag, I know exactly where to score you both at the same time,
potting soil, for $4.97 a bag.

Pay more, and you, buddy, have been smoking the alluvium.

You want dope?

Ask a dirtbag.

You want a bag of dirt?

Ask a dope.

Do not expect results of government.