Pubdate: Thu, 09 May 2002
Source: Westender (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 WestEnder
Contact:  http://www.westender.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1243
Author: Brian Peterson

SOME IDEAS WE COULD LIVE WITHOUT

Last week I was trying to get press credentials to the IDEAS conference, 
the big anti-drug powwow for Vancouver's creme de la creme sponsored by 
local real estate mogul Bob Bentall and his wife Lynda in partnership with 
the Drug Free America Foundation.

Drug Free America...hee haw...that's a good one.

Why, without addiction to sit-coms, Budweiser, Marlboro's, artificial 
sweeteners, slot machines, internet porn and Viagra, the U.S. economy would 
flounder. If banks and stockbrokers stopped laundering obvious illegal drug 
profits the system would expire for want of fluid cash. The very notion 
smacks of treason and terrorism.

Still I was curious. I'd been seeing the inflammatory ads for a few months 
decrying "medical" cannabis as a hoax, denouncing drug law liberalization 
as pusher propaganda and, astonishingly, declaring that harsher sentences 
and zero-tolerance (yawn) would win The War on Drugs.

Now I admire the "never say die" pluck of folks who'll proudly assert 
they're winning despite 40-odd years of expensive evidence to the contrary. 
Still, 5,000 years of therapeutic use of an herb is a fact, not a hoax. It 
works. And the idea that pushers want decriminalization (meaning prices 
would tumble and they would make less money) is absurd.

And yet another Parliamentary sub-committee on illegal drugs is grumbling 
again that pot use is relatively benign and prohibition costly and 
ineffective because...uh...they want to hurt children?

Still, if the creme de la creme say it's so, then I thought I'd at least 
try and listen to their IDEAS, so I wrote a smarmy letter to whom it may 
concern.

Dear Sirs: I'm sharing parenting duties with a 15-year-old and I've 
recently been confronted firsthand with the limitations of the 
harm-reduction ideology in practice.

Please call me at your earliest convenience to confirm press credentials. 
Yours truly, (blah blah).

Well, I got a call quite smartly from Bob Bentall, who told me that space 
was limited and they'd have to turn me down.

"Ah gee, Bob. That's disappointing. It sounds like you've got some great 
speakers booked."

"Oh yes, we're very proud. Very proud."

"So how about a day pass then? Or a couple hours to a check out a speaker?" 
"Well, you see it's a private function, Brian."

"But you've spent $200,000 on this event. It seems odd you wouldn't want 
the press there to propagate your good IDEAS, Bob."

"Well you see, space is limited, Brian. So we've had to turn quite a few 
people down."

"So you are allowing some press in?"

"Well, you see it's a private function, Brian."

"Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight, okay Bob. Have yourself a grand little symposium then. 
Buh-bye!"

Spurned but undaunted, I took a surf to the Drug Free America Foundation 
website just to make sure I was abreast of their cutting edge ideas. Its 
opening page graphic welcoming me to Drug Free America showed an idyllic 
cluster of buildings: a library, hospital, school, church and factory 
surrounded by lush green lawns. But curiously, no people.

I guess half of them are housed in highrise "prisons and drug treatment 
centers for profit" shaded in the background, with the other half of the 
populace employed as snitches and jailers.

A further search revealed that DFAF is a reincarnation of Straight 
Incorporated, the infamous teen drug treatment program chain with extensive 
Bush family connections (Eeeek!), that had been successfully sued out of 
existence for using violent and abusive brainwashing tactics not out of 
place in North Korean prison camps.

Curiosity piqued, I went down to Canada Place on May 1 to see if I could 
pull a weasel, but I was distracted by the counter-symposium happening 
openly outside. Much free speech and illuminating pamphletry was 
distributed to any who would partake.

And the message was: Yeah, cash may give you the power to purchase 
publicity. But it can't buy integrity and the majority of Canadians are 
educated and bored of the tired, hypocritical U.S. DEA-sponsored lies aimed 
at diminishing our dwindling sovereignty.

Hilary Black of the Vancouver Compassion Club was there but had little time 
to waste bashing the IDEAS losers. She was on her way to the 2nd National 
Community Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics in Portland 
(sponsored by, amongst others, The Oregon Nurses Association) to get 
together with the real heroes who are pooling their knowledge and 
comforting the sick, not jailing them.

Black's Compassion Club was coincidentally celebrating its fifth 
anniversary of exemplary medical marijuana distribution to the sick and 
grateful, with no police interference or hassles.

Now that's a real IDEA!
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom