LUMPING POT IN WITH HARD DRUGS LUDICROUS

Shortly before the hydrogen-bomb-to-swat-a-fly police action descended on
Da Kine Smoke and Beverage Shop last week, I met with several of my
degenerate dope-smoking friends outside the Commercial Drive business.

A sign inside requested all media and law enforcement to present themselves
immediately to staff.

I just stood there with my hands in my pockets, watching my friends join a
crowd three deep-Vancouverites of all ages and ethnicity, who were signing
forms at the front desk and eyeing menus offering melt-your-face-off
varieties of B.C. weed.

Coincidentally, the Thursday raid took place at six o'clock, just in time
for the evening news. And goodness me, TV helicopters had arrived in mere
minutes to record this heavy-handed nonsense for posterity.

Sometimes the universe comes together in an amazing way, dude.

Not many Vancouverites seemed particularly exercised about Da Kine. Not
Mayor Larry Campbell (at least not at first) and not the residents of
Commercial Drive, some of whom were glad to see that street dealers had
evaporated along that stretch of the Drive (although technically, Da Kine's
staff were acting as dealers themselves). I'll bet there were even a few
police out there who thought the exercise a farce.

Ask any cop on the beat who he'd rather deal with: a bunch of lubricated
yobs spilling out of a Granville Street bar at 4 a.m., or a few characters
with bemused expressions exiting a neighbourhood head shop in a skunky
cumulus of B.C.'s best.

Vancouver neither welcomes nor wants an American-style war on drugs,
especially with law enforcement resources drawn away from major crimes in
the city. So what's going on with cops looking the other way for the four
months since Da Kine opened, and the made-for-TV raid last week? Thursday's
raid followed comments on the front page of that day's Vancouver Sun from
Solicitor General Rich Coleman, linking the human wasteland on Vancouver's
East Side to the sale of marijuana.

This is the very same Coleman who suggested last January that through some
unexplained Rube Goldberg process, B.C. bud buys guns for Afghan terrorists.

I suspect Coleman's been getting a contact high from U.S. law enforcement
agencies. For decades the DEA and the CIA have been running around the
globe like Dr. Seuss's Thing One and Thing Two, ensuring draconian drug
laws are in place from Panama to Pakistan, while enabling_ oh, never mind.
Don't want to get off track and sound all conspiratorial again.

In any case, American writer Robert Anton Wilson nails it when he talks
about "war on some drugs." The U.S. government likes to cite the very real
dangers of crack cocaine in its propaganda, but according to Wilson it
actually spends most of its anti-drug budget fighting the relatively
harmless and often medicinal marijuana.

Drugs that are officially endorsed in Western culture-sugar, caffeine,
nicotine, alcohol, tranquilizers, and antidepressants-feed what writer
Terrence McKenna called the Dominator style of personality. Writing of
McKenna's thesis, Wilson says the first three "keep all of us 'wired'
enough to maintain the competitive, mildly sociopath personal ego necessary
to survive in such a society and to perpetuate the values of that
domination/submission system." The others, the booze and tranks, "allow us
the occasional numbing and escape without which we would all probably crack
up and crumble under the stress."

However, a few of the drugs that aren't officially sanctioned, and subject
to judicial taboos -psychedelics and marijuana-are incompatible with
Dominator values and break down ego defenses.

Psychedelics I won't argue for, and I'm not much of a cheerleader for
recreational drug use, dope included.

But to conflate marijuana with dangerous, addictive drugs like cocaine,
methamphetamines, and heroin is only conceivable to a rigid, authoritarian
mindset that rejects distinctions. An American mindset perhaps?

U.S. officials have expressed their displeasure with Vancouver's efforts to
forge an ambiguous path between the legalization and criminalization of
drugs, and its harm reduction efforts on Vancouver's East Side. Perhaps the
leaky law enforcement circus along Commercial Drive last week was a bit of
theatre for Washington's benefit.

In any case, when it comes to drug raids with high production values, it
seems to me the chain of command doesn't always run through the mayor's office.

The clear and present danger of human stupidity is always with us, but I'm
hopeful reason will prevail.

Weed isn't going to go away. Demand will always find a supply, and in
B.C.'s future, it's better that legally sanctioned businesses service it
than Hells Angels. Skunkweed is in air-Coleman and those whispering in his
ear need to wake up and smell the New World Odour. gefo@telus.net