Pubdate: Thu, 06 May 2004 Source: Regina Leader-Post (CN SN) Author: Ron Petrie Copyright: 2004 The Leader-Post Ltd. Contact: http://www.canada.com/regina/leaderpost/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/361 Author: Ron Petrie The Leader-Post DOPE, DIRT: GOV'T CAN'T GET IT RIGHT ANYHOW Today in our series "Could Government Be More Useless?" we follow up yesterday's conclusion "Hard to Imagine" with the epilogue "So Which Government, Federal or Provincial, is More Useless?" Consider the following comparison of two actual news events this week. TRUE NEWS ITEM A: Marijuana grown by the federal government is so bad that a third of the patients with medical approval to smoke it have sent back the pot, says an advocate for medicinal cannabis. Phillippe Lucas told Canadian Press that tests commissioned by his group, Canadians for Safe Access, found the medicinal marijuana to be only half as strong as the federal government claims and, in many cases, ineffective against pain. Documents he obtained through a federal access to information request indicate 29 of 92 approved users have returned or cancelled their orders. "Visibly, it's horrible," Lucas said. "There's visible stock and stem and it's ground too fine to actually roll so you're forced to use it in a pipe and when you do it burns very black with dark, acrid ash." NEWS ITEM B: Bagged dredgings handed out as souvenirs of Wascana Lake's historic deepening are less than 100 per cent pure. Hundreds of families at a lakeside ceremony March 28 took home the keepsake samples of earth, plastic bags of dirt most believed was scraped from the creek bed while dams held back the waters. No one was told otherwise. Challenged this week by the Opposition Saskatchewan Party, the provincial government acknowledged that mixed into the genuine Wascana clay, mud, decayed algae and goose poop was foreign sand, originally hauled in from a pit near Findlater for use during the dig. "You can't put alluvian in a bag and hand it out because this is the rotting material from the bottom of the lake," said Deb Higgins, minister for the Saskatchewan Property Management Corp. "There was sand that was mixed in to make it easier to get into the bags." So there you have it. Goverments in action. The useless bag of dirt versus the useless bag of dope. Let us compare and contrast further. Both came from underground operations, albeit both legal. On one hand, we have Regina, and an excavation to set Wascana Lake back down below the ground level where all bodies of water belong, a joint project of the municipal, provincial and federal governments. On the other hand, we have Flin Flon, and an abandoned underground mine in which a company from Saskatoon working on a federal contract grows medicinal-grade pot, another - -- thaaaat's right -- "joint" project. In either case, it is obvious now that government stepped in where the job called for a man: in the backyard, behind the hedge where nobody ever looks, be the man a guy of 17 years (grow the pot) or a guy of 17 months (play in the dirt). Saskatchewan is nationally renowned for its rich soils, yet provincial bureaucrats in Regina misrepresented common dirt. Whereas federal bureaucrats allegedly misrepresented common pot, even though Ottawa is nationally renowned for its rich dopes. Agriculturally, the two substances, one mineral and the other vegetable, could not be more different. Pot farmers need dirt more than dirt farmers need pot (with the exception of making sense from federal-provincial agricultural policies, in which case: vice-versa). It is said that a German shepherd working for the police drug squad can identify pure marijuana with one sniff of the open bag. If Wascana Lake dredgings were pure, one sniff of the open bag would kill a German shepherd. The Flin Flon project cost taxpayers $5.5 million over five years, or about $16,000 an ounce for the marijuana so far produced, according to the activist Lucus. The Wascana project had a budget of $18 million. I do not know the private price for marijuana on the street and haven't the foggiest first clue how to calculate the unit price per bag of private Saskatchewan dirt from, say, $60,000 a quarter, but, listen, if pot is your bag, and if soil is your bag, I know exactly where to score you both at the same time, potting soil, for $4.97 a bag. Pay more, and you, buddy, have been smoking the alluvium. You want dope? Ask a dirtbag. You want a bag of dirt? Ask a dope. Do not expect results of government. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom