Pubdate: Tue, 27 Aug 2013
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2013 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: 
http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/letters/letters-to-the-editor.html
Website: http://www.calgaryherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Naomi Lakritz

JUSTIN TRUDEAU GOES TO POT AND JOINS PAULINA

On Saturday, Postmedia columnist Stephen Maher, writing about Justin 
Trudeau's admission that he smoked marijuana after being elected an 
MP, said "it shows that he is a different kind of politician - more 
like Paulina Gretzky than Mackenzie King - a product of the social media age."

Paulina Gretzky is about as appealing as a prime ministerial 
candidate as Lindsay Lohan is for president of the United States. As 
for Mackenzie King, who'd want another prime minister like him? He 
consulted with the spirit of his dead mother on policy issues and for 
a time openly admired Adolf Hitler. As Allan Levine tells it in his 
2011 biography of King, after meeting Hitler in 1937, King admired 
the "constructive work of (Hitler's) regime, and said that I hoped 
that that would continue ... That it was bound to be followed in 
other countries to the great advantage of mankind."

Yes, well, we all know how that ended. But never mind Gretzky and 
King. Is it too much to ask that Canada's next prime minister be 
someone who understands the basic tenet that when you are an MP, and 
your work involves making laws, you should not also be breaking laws?

Justice Minister Peter MacKay nailed it: "By flouting the laws of 
Canada while holding elected office, he shows he is a poor example 
for all Canadians, particularly young ones. Justin Trudeau is simply 
not the kind of leader our country needs." That spurred Rick Mercer 
to tweet a photo of MacKay guzzling beer, which appeared in 1989 in 
his Dalhousie University law school yearbook. There's a difference, 
of course. Beer is a legal substance, and even if MacKay overdid it - 
something that's unknown - it was 1989 and he was a college kid. 
Trudeau was an MP, married with kids, when he had friends over for an 
evening, and he puffed on a joint that was making the rounds. Grow up, Justin.

Trudeau should have refused that joint and told his friends that, as 
an MP charged with helping write the laws of this country, he cannot 
have an illegal substance in his home, and they should get rid of it 
immediately. His friends should have known better ahead of time. 
Bring some marijuana into the home of a member of Parliament? Not the 
brightest of ideas.

Instead, because Trudeau believes pot should be legalized, he didn't 
see anything wrong with taking a puff, or even with having marijuana 
in his home, where his children live. Is that the message he wants 
his kids to take away from this when they're old enough to find out 
about the pot incident - that if you don't agree with the law, it is 
your right to break it? That you're entitled to do as you please 
because entitlement is all that matters? Entitlement, of course, has 
its roots in narcissism, and narcissism is the fuel on which social media runs.

Trudeau can join Paulina Gretzky on the list of prime ministerial 
possibilities who are not ready for prime time.

His stance on legalizing pot is a sad one, indeed. It doesn't seem to 
matter to him that research has linked marijuana to the development 
of schizophrenia in young people. It doesn't seem to matter - and a 
quick Google search or a phone call to an addictions treatment centre 
would bring up reams of information on this - that marijuana 
addiction has destroyed marriages and families, and ruined people's 
lives. So has alcohol, of course, and legalizing marijuana will only 
increase the toll it already takes in society.

And just what is this obsession with using mindaltering substances? 
Do we need to legalize marijuana because sobriety is so utterly 
intolerable that life can't be faced without inhaling a mind-altering 
substance?

According to Health Canada, the effects of marijuana include: "Mild 
paranoia, anxiety or panic, psychosis, impaired reaction time, 
co-ordination and motor skills, impaired short-term memory ... visual 
or other perceptual distortions, hallucinations, severe agitation, 
disorientation." And Trudeau wants to legalize this - why?

Smoking pot is stupid, senseless and a waste of time. And if 
marijuana is legalized, its disgusting, nauseating, skunk-like stench 
will be everywhere, the way cigarette smoke used to be.

Equally troubling is the fact that Trudeau, instead of being censured 
for breaking the law as an MP, is being lauded for his transparency. 
It's as though transparency is the supreme societal virtue and as 
long as you're transparent, that's all that matters.

Life itself has become a Facebook page.

Since when is being "a product of the social media age," to quote 
Maher's summing up of Trudeau, anything more than a synonym for 
superficiality? When did qualities like substance, depth and respect 
for the law lose their value? Shouldn't the realization be innate 
that if you're an MP, you need to live your private life with the 
same principles that are supposedly guiding your public one?

Instead of a product of the social media age, we need someone who 
strives for statesmanship. Otherwise, there really is no reason 
Paulina Gretzky shouldn't be the next prime minister.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom