HAVING SAMPLED THE MARIJUANA OF TODAY - PURELY FOR JOURNALISTIC
REASONS -- I REALIZE HOW POWERFUL THE STUFF IS COMPARED TO THE HIPPY-DIPPY '60s

Yet another anniversary of the Great Walnut Avenue Bust is quickly
approaching, bringing back memories of an evening spent locked up in
the 52 Division holding tank with the usual weekend constituency of
drunks, druggies, rapists, muggers and, in the mind's eye at the
time, the prerequisite mass murderer with the zombie-like stare who
was giving everyone the heebie-jeebies.

Time has not been an eraser.

One minute I am arriving home from working the night sports desk at
Canadian Press, my part-time job while studying journalism at
Ryerson, and, the next, long-haired undercover drug cops with their
guns drawn are smashing down the door of the flophouse I am renting
with three other students.

And all of us are busted for marijuana possession, a heavy-duty
charge back in the hippy-dippy days of the early '70s when making
love, not war, was the mantra, and cursed pot was the stepping stone
on the devil's road to ruination.

Handcuffs, mug shots, fingerprints. The works.

It was quite the night. I even remember what I was wearing during
arraignment, a pair of black jeans and a Fly United T-shirt showing
two birds copulating in mid-flight -- not the most respectful apparel
for making a good first impression in response to the clerk's
utterance of "Will the defendant please rise," although future Sun
photographer Barry Gray thought it was worth taking a pic for posterity.

The judge, however, must have been impressed. Not only did he give me
bail, he later tossed out the charges against me -- but not without a
quick lecture about how marijuana was a gateway drug that would lead
to almost certain addiction and that, if I continued without a lesson
learned, I was on a very slippery slope that would surely lead to hell.

Fast forward now to the 21st century.

A few weeks ago, the National Post wrote in one of its main
editorials that the time had come to legalize marijuana in this
country -- citing a UN report that says Canada now leads the
industrialized world in cannabis use by a ratio of 4-to-1.

In fact, if the UN report is on the money, almost one in six of us
under pension age regularly smokes pot, which is virtually a third
more than in the United States. And, according to the UN, we smoke
dope at almost three times the rate of the supposedly hemp-happy Dutch.

What I was going to write before the smoke got in my eyes was that I
was all in favour of at least decriminalizing marijuana until I
smoked a joint of the stuff that is now commonly available -- a
single, tightly-rolled spliff of hydroponically grown cannabis that
was "gifted" to me, shall we say, for "research purposes only."

And, let me tell you right now, the stuff of today is like heroin
compared to the stuff that had me before a judge a quarter century
ago, and I am not so sure that it would be wise to have it legalized
when the THC levels are pushing the red line to uncharted heights.

Right now, there are makers of Ecstasy who are mixing crystal meth
into their recipe, all to get young people addicted to what they
thought was an uncomplicated rave drug perfect for a night in the
Entertainment District.

What's next? PCP in pot?

No, if we could return to the hippy-dippy marijuana of the early
'70s, with its 4% THC levels, its gentle buzz and Iron Butterfly
refrains, well, maybe it might be okay.

But not when it comes to today's stuff.

When someone tells me today that ... hey, it's only pot ... well, I
think incapacitation. One hydroponic joint had me legless for hours,
unable to lift a finger let alone write a play-by-play about its
effects as its effects took place. And that was my original intention.

In the rash of politicians to make a later-in-life confessions to
drug use in their earlier years -- ie: Ontario Health Minister George
Smitherman (party drugs?), former U.S. president Bill Clinton (who
did not "inhale"), U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama ("pot ...
and booze, maybe a little blow when you could afford it.") -- one of
the more recent confessors is British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith,
admitting she smoked cannabis in her university days, and that "it
was wrong that I smoked it when I did."

This put her in a bit of a pickle, since Britain is in the midst of
making a U-turn in its toughening of drug laws by reclassifying
marijuana as a Class B substance -- putting it in the same league as
amphetamines and barbiturates -- which carry a maximum penalty of
five years in jail for mere possession.

Britain, however, may be ahead of the curve in realizing that the pot
of today is not the pot of the good old days of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida --
not when there are various forms of "skunk weed" in the mix, a
powerful cross-bred strain of a marijuana that gets its name from its
pungent smell.

As former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, who heads the British
commission on drug use, recently told The Observer newspaper, "We now
know that cannabis is incredibly dangerous as a drug. For years
people have been allowed to get away with this rather loose and
wishy-washy idea that in the '60s we smoked it and it didn't matter.

"But in the '60s it was a much less potent drug, and now they have
this stuff that is home-grown, which is at least 12 times more powerful."

And then he added this:

"The real effect is on young kids who take it," he said. "We
regularly have kids who take it at the age of 11 or 12. If your brain
is growing, you can kiss goodbye to that -- by the time you are 16 or
17 you will be in a psychotic state."

Shades of Reefer Madness, deja vu all over again.