Right in the centre - Stirring the pot

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Published on Monday, October 22, 2018

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner & Press

The Province of Manitoba is embarking on what looks like a very dumb move.

They are talking about banning marijuana in cookies. Like, good luck with that. Maybe it should be against the law, but who on earth is going to enforce it? Why not just make it illegal to be high in public and cut the nonsense surrounding this issue? Nobody in their right mind will be able to pay enough police staff to control this. Marijuana consumption is legal now, just as smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol. It’s illegal to smoke in public places. It’s illegal to consume or to carry open liquor around. It is illegal to smoke pot publicly. Rules, rules and more rules. The more rules you make, the more you have to make.

Trust a government to screw things up. Simplicity is the answer. Don’t smoke in restricted areas. Don’t be drunk or high in public to the point you are a menace to yourself or others.

I personally don’t get the idea of smoking. I have never smoked pot. Even though I attended university in the 1960s, I only know about seeing pot smoked once. People laugh at me because I still don’t recognize the smell of pot. At any rate, smoking is legal and I agree with that, but don’t be smoking around others. If you want to smoke, go ahead, but don’t inflict the destructive habit on other people. That’s all I ask.

Governments think they can shape all aspects of society with more rules. Making, selling and drinking alcohol used to be illegal in North America. It didn’t work out all that well. As soon as you make something illegal, it goes underground and with bad consequences. The drug trade preys on the young and the weakened in our society. It’s quite sad really.

Now that marijuana is legal, it will be only a matter of time until other drugs move up the acceptability chain. It’s a death march and I don’t pretend to have the solution. I also feel deep sympathy for people who are hooked on drugs and deeper sympathy for people who have lost loved ones to drugs. I guess if someone can figure out why people ever start into drugs, they will get rich pretty fast as the whole world would like that answer. I do know that some kids get lured and sucked into the drug world and I have zero sympathy for the people who do the luring.

I think I would like everyone to take the whole drug and alcohol thing a bit more seriously. Just think about it, is the misuse of pot or other drugs really a joking matter? Many times you hear people joking and talking about getting drunk or getting high. To me it’s not a joke, it’s a very serious issue. It’s only when someone gets really hurt physically or emotionally or when someone dies that the discussion becomes very sobering. Do people have to die before consequences are taken seriously? Being high, getting drunk, charcoaling your lung linings, none of this is funny.

More laws and more rules won’t change the situation. People’s hearts have to change and that means we have to look beyond ourselves. The solution starts with the letter “G” but it’s not Government, it’s God.