SHADES OF REEFER MADNESS

"God didn't make marijuana, little girl. That was yer Mexican
bandits." -Archie Bunker, to daughter Gloria, on the "real" origins of
the devil weed.

I just gotta tell ya-and I swear to the same God that Archie Bunker
worships-that when View editor Chris "Rock" Watson forwarded me an
e-mail in big block headlines entitled, PUBLIC HEALTH REVEALS the
MARIJUANA TRUTH, I actually thought it was a gag perpetrated by those
notorious doobie brothers who run the Up in Smoke cafe in beautiful
(?) downtown Hamilton.

But it was no joke.

It was an honest to goodness media release from the City of Hamilton's
head nurse, Jennifer Jenkins, and after careful consideration, it
would be my opinion that the information contained in the PR was
something out of the height of the Reefer Madness scare in the 1950s,
drenched in fear and loathing.

I half expected it to also read, "Just Say No," a la former First Lady
Nancy Reagan's much ridiculed "war on drugs'" crusade back in the
'80s, when it was believed that slogans and scare tactics would keep
the kids off the grass.

"The City of Hamilton is taking an aggressive stance against marijuana
use in the community," screams the city PR tome. "The campaign takes
direct aim at parents in an effort to dispel the myths that surround
marijuana use, while ultimately keeping the kids in the community safe."

"We have a problem; society has shifted its viewpoint on this illegal
drug. There seems to be a consensus that this drug is not harmful and
there is much confusion around its legal status," writes nurse Jenkins.

Later, in a phone interview, Jenkins claimed that, locally, reefer use
was "in our face," citing the Up in Smoke cafe and the recent mass
busts of 126 teen potheads at area high schools.

And, flying in the face of just about all of the accepted science on
the recreational use of marijuana, Jenkins claimed that weed could be
"mildly" physically addicting, citing an obscure 2003 study posted on
the Health Canada website.

Jenkins went on to say that the spleef peddled today is not the same
stuff Baby Boomers-shurely not moi!- and their ilk grew up with, but a
much more potent devil weed that may grip the toker like a bad case of
the Asian flu.

(Perhaps Jenkins does has a point on the potency issue, as I do seem
to recall that 30 years ago "nickel bags" of grass were not very good.
But lots of high grade hash was widely available even way back when,
and as Tommy Chong once said, "that stuff really grabs ya by the boo-boo.")

Although denied by Jenkins, the marijuana mandate from the city sure
appears to be some kind of drug alert or policy, yet Jenkins said in
an e-mail that the PR was strictly "a health communication campaign."

Regardless of what you call it, it still walks like a duck, and in a
community that has a large problem with hard street drugs like crack
cocaine, angel dust and speed, the fixation with reefer seems to be a
concept whose time has come and gone about 40 years ago.

Jenkins claims that "research shows" that education of parents on the
marijuana issue is important in preventing the youth from wasting away
in Margaritaville. "Research also shows that teens prefer to get
information from their parents and not their peers," she said.

Yet when I suggested to Jenkins that it appears that peer pressure-and
socio-economic class-may be more a factor in the consumption of
marijuana by youths than lectures from parents, and asked her to cite
the origins of "research shows," she did not reply.

But Hamilton's own Fast Times at Ridgemont High's Jeff Spicoli-"hey
Bud, let's party!"-and co-owner of the Up in Smoke cafe, Ryan Clark,
did reply.

"What a disturbing piece of propaganda," said Clark in an e-mail
interview. "While I can only comment with my own general opinion, I
will say that Hamilton's current anti-marijuana campaign looks about
ten years old. It's tired, archaic and dated in the worst possible
way."

Clark went on to also complain that an anti-weed commercial running on
local TV stations made ganja guys and gals appear to be really
rascally rotten.

"Funny, I am a pot smoker and I don't feel like a serial killer," said
Clark.

Clark also said that only hours after Jean Cooper, a 70- year-old
great grandmother the cops busted in the Up in Smoke cafe last summer,
was given an absolute discharge for a charge of possession of
marijuana, the police were back into UIS and arrested two UIS club
members, both Mohawk College students. "I kid you not," added Clark.

Look, I'm sure that nurse Jenkins is sincere in trying to "educate"
both parents and youth about street drugs, but the old-really
old-argument that marijuana is addictive or a "gateway" drug to other,
harder dope, has largely proven to be, well, bullshit.

If the "health communication campaign" PR would have targeted actual,
dangerous street drugs, you would now be reading an analysis of how
the city got it right and how the problem can be tackled, if in fact
it can under current circumstances.

But recycling the variants of the tired "scared straight" routine from
the '80s, which was shown not to be a lasting cure-all even back then,
serves little or no purpose today, especially when hip young people's
horseshit meters are running on high-no pun intended.

And when the government has once again promised to bring home new
decriminalization laws for simple possession and recreational use of
weed, how can the City of Hamilton present marijuana as some sort of
terrorizing scourge, and then be taken seriously?

Prohibition of alcohol use did not work, could not work, and neither
will any "campaign" to stamp out reefer, as long as free will remains
entrenched in our Charter of Rights.

The City of Hamilton needs to have a reality check, or at least check
what they been smokin'.