WHAT ARE THEY SMOKING OVER AT THE GLOBE?

After doing independent research on marijuana 15-year-old Saskatchewan
Grade 10 student Kieran King told his friends that, in his opinion,
marijuana was less harmful than either alcohol or tobacco. Expressing
this opinion, unfortunately, put him at odds with his principal-who,
King alleges, threatened to call the police if he discussed marijuana
again. When King protested, he was suspended from school for three
days.

Even more ridiculous than punishing a 15-year-old for voicing such an
opinion-one backed up by an avalanche of scientific research and a
Canadian Senate Committee-is some of the debate that has erupted in
the wake of the incident.

Since 1923-the year marijuana was criminalized in Canada-the
justification for its vilification has been based on scientific
fallacies and a not insignificant amount of racism. Instead of
undertaking any scientific studies of the drug, the Canadian
government outlawed the use of marijuana primarily because it was
associated with the Chinese workers who built the Canadian Pacific
Railway and were seen as a problem after the CPR was finished using
them as cheap labour. Public opinion in the matter was swayed by a
series of articles by Emily Murphy-yeah, that Emily Murphy, writing
under the name Janey Canuck-that appeared in Maclean's.

This week the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente took a similar tack
while applauding the school's position. Claiming the potency of
marijuana has skyrocketed, making today's marijuana as addictive as
cocaine, Wente cited no scientific sources and cloaked herself in smug
boomer hypocrisy when she opined that it was just fine for her and her
friends to smoke a little pot back in the '60s but, because marijuana
is "many times more powerful" than it used to be, it is now causing
disastrous social problems in Canada. And, in a style eerily
reminiscent of Emily Murphy's racist ravings against the Chinese,
Wente goes on to claim that the new super weed is causing absolute
reefer madness amongst "certain ethnic minorities," mentioning native
reservations.

Taking a position that was unsupported by any scientific evidence
nearly a century ago is laughable, but taking one based on racist
rhetoric is pathetic.