CANNABIS TESTS FUTILE

EVERY now and then a furious schoolmarm from Northland writes to tell me
what an idiot I am.

If only I knew what I was talking about I would never try to argue in
favour of decriminalising marijuana. Every day she has to go to school to
try to teach a room full of kids zonked out of their minds. At 14 they are
regular, heavy users of cannabis.

It has destroyed their brains and blown away their future. The only cure,
she writes, is stricter laws and harsher penalties. Because her letters are
always so rude, I bristle and bridle and toss them away. But when I tidy
them up and re-read them, I grin in triumph.

Already marijuana is illegal. But here she is admitting that the law is
powerless to stop the use of marijuana. So she is, illogically, calling for
tougher laws.

I admire and pity my correspondent.

When I was a teacher, I was blessed with keen alert pupils.

At 14 they spoke four languages and could write in four alphabets. Religion
had closed off part of their minds, so they could not easily follow general
science. But with a bit of cunning we teachers were able to get most of the
syllabus into their heads.

If, though, they had been steadily stupefied we might not have bothered: we
would have felt defeated. So I cling to the idea of decriminalising the
possession of small quantities of cannabis for these reasons.

The present law gives pot-smoking the charm of the forbidden, which in turn
tempts kids to use the stuff.

The law puts a value on cannabis, and this invites criminals in. If we
could grow a few plants ourselves, the value would be destroyed. Dope
pushers would be out of business. It follows that decriminalising marijuana
ought to be the best way of stamping the stuff out.

And if that is the best way, what is the worst?

Let me nominate the Hokitika method.

The Hokitika police have just bought a bunch of dope-testing kits which
they are offering to sell at $10 a go to parents who suspect their kids are
smoking.

Parents are instructed to get the kids to pee into a bottle. If the urine
turns red, green, blue or whatever, there's your proof that the kid has
been smoking.

A child of only moderate intelligence would add watered-down tea to the
bottle and escape detection - and for the rest of his life would know his
parents were so creepy that they had used sneaky tests to try to trap him.

There are only a few ways of destroying a family. Setting traps is one sure
way.

The Hokitika method sounds exactly like the American way of winning the
Vietnam War by blowing up friendly villages - and their inhabitants - to
save them from the Vietcong.