Pubdate: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC) Copyright: 2012 Times Colonist Contact: http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/letters.html Website: http://www.timescolonist.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481 Author: Shannon Corregan RELAX, WE'RE ALREADY A MARIJUANA CULTURE Last Friday, more than 1,000 people sat down in Centennial Square and publicly engaged in an illegal activity, and nobody seemed to care much. April 20 (better known as 4/20) is a day for the annual celebration of marijuana use. Cannabis is, of course, illegal in Canada, except for medical purposes, but you'd never have guessed it from the tone of Friday's gathering: It was a beautiful day, people were eating frozen yogurt and the streets were busy with construction crews and tourists. The police presence near the square was visible but minimal: I heard no sirens, I saw no arrests. In short, there were no signs that an illegal mass activity was taking place. And there you have it, our complicated and contradictory relationship with marijuana. On the one hand, it's illegal; on the other, it's everywhere. Not literally, of course, but in pop culture, marijuana is often portrayed as an acceptable part of the average lifestyle. For example, I'd forgotten it was 4/20 until I switched radio stations and realized I was listening to a weed-themed rock hour. No other illegal activity enjoys such mainstream ubiquity, let alone acceptance. Maybe this is what comes of spending too much time in B.C. - a 2009 Angus Reid Public Opinion estimated that 61 per cent of British Columbians support legalizing marijuana, the largest percentage of any Canadian province. We produce the most of it (40 per cent of Canadian weed is B.c.-grown), and we smoke the most of it, after Quebec. Last February, four former B.C. attorneys-general came out in support of its legalization. But a lot of other Canadians are okay with weed, too - 77 per cent of the delegates of the federal Liberal party's January convention supported its legalization, and the same Angus Reid poll put 53 per cent of Canadians in favour. Despite marijuana's illegality, most of us are actually totally OK with it. Little wonder, then, that it's present, even celebrated, in our music, our movies and our TV shows. What makes this cultural acceptance stranger is that much of Canadians' pop-culture lexicon is America-centric. Most American politicians are way more freaked out about weed than Canadian politicians are, yet marijuana use is still an accepted part of the standard American sitcom repertoire. On the prime-time staple How I Met Your Mother, for example, weed is depicted in the same way as alcohol. While the characters go for pints far more often than they smoke up, marijuana is depicted as a harmless substance that serves as the catalyst for some of Ted and Marshall's wacky adventures, rather than as a dangerous and illegal drug. It's certainly depicted as less dangerous than smoking tobacco, which is unequivocally painted as a Bad Thing. Tobacco is a destructive habit that the characters must wean themselves off before they're able to settle into functional family units. In order to be good parents, Marshall and Lily must first quit smoking. According to the show, tobacco is not only dangerous but socially unacceptable, and therefore fundamentally at odds with a normal, healthy life. Marijuana? Not so much. While delirious stoners remain the butt of as many jokes as ever in film and on TV, popular culture has normalized the idea of casual marijuana use. My point is not that if everyone on TV is doing it, then everyone in real life must be doing it, but rather, that for economic purposes, pop-culture products tend to reflect dominant social mores. Putting aside for a moment the medical, political and economic arguments for or against its legalization - if we speak descriptively rather than normatively - young Canadians, and British Columbians in particular, seem to be OK with marijuana as a part of our culture. Of course, this support isn't universal, and it's not entirely generational, either: Young people in the military are far more likely to come across the kind of literature that emphasizes marijuana's potential dangers and health risks, whereas people who are active on campuses have greater access to literature that emphasizes the hypocrisy of criminalizing marijuana while allowing alcohol and tobacco. And as cultural acceptance of marijuana use grows, this hypocrisy becomes harder to ignore. Opponents' largest anxiety is that we will witness drastic and negative social changes if we embrace marijuana, but it seems to me that that fear is unfounded. Because, as last Friday shows, we've actually already embraced it. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D