Pubdate: Sun, 11 Dec 2016
Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB)
Copyright: 2016 Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact: http://www.edmontonsun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://www.edmontonsun.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/135
Author: Mark Bonokoski
Page: 19

SMOKING TODAY'S DOPE LIKE IT'S THE SEVENTIES? STONED!

The Remembrance Day Massacre, as it was dubbed, began at 3 a.m. when
long-haired Toronto drug cops busted down the door of our shared
apartment, guns drawn, and hauled the four of us off in handcuffs.

I was arraigned in court for marijuana possession the next morning,
wearing blue jeans, sneakers and my Fly United T-shirt showing two
ducks copulating in mid-flight.

This was in the `70s.

I had already been fingerprinted and had my mug shot taken before
appearing before the bail-court judge, as had my three roomies, all
students at Ryerson.

The dope seized amounted to about two ounces of pot which, back then,
was good enough for a trafficking charge.

That said, you could have smoked the entire cache, burned out the
lining of your lungs, and not gotten that high.

The THC level back in the days of The Doors was a modest two per
cent.

Long story short, I eventually had the charge against me dismissed,
simply because I was the only one arrested who refused to 'fess up to
anything.

So they eventually cut me loose. No pot was found in my room, ergo
there was no evidence to present.

Forty-plus years later, the Trudeau Liberals are now in the process of
legalizing weed.

This prompted an excellent Postmedia series on the ways, the means and
the potential problems of making pot legal, and still keep society on
the straight and narrow.

The same week, the CBC's Marketplace went to seven Toronto pot
dispensaries, collected 12 of the most-popular strains, and sent them
off to a lab to measure the THC levels.

This brings me to part two.

Not that long ago, a colleague gave me a joint of the stuff she smoked
during her 90-minute commute to the city. Being younger, and a daily
toker of medicinal marijuana, she told me it was likely stronger than
the stuff I had smoked back in the day, but that it produced a mellow
high.

Fair enough. If she could safely drive while toking down the highway,
I should have no worries.

A couple of days later, alone at a cottage, I sat down, fired it up,
and Bogarted the entire joint.

Big mistake.

For the next five hours, I was absolutely legless. I could not get up.
I could not even lift my hands off my knees.

I might as well have been made of stone. Looking back now, if an ember
had lit the couch on fire, there would be nothing I could do except
watch in horror as the flames licked me into the next life.

No question about it, the pot I had just smoked was not the pot of the
hippie generation of which I was once a tie-dyed member.

Some five hours later, I was finally able to move.

But I certainly wasn't motivated to do so. I sat there like a slug for
another two hours, thinking to myself … jeeez-uz!

What in hell did I just smoke!?

Well, according to Marketplace, the marijuana they purchased at those
Toronto dispensaries had an average THC level of 20, with some
reaching as high as 30 -- more than 15 times the `70s pot.

No wonder I was catatonic.

Now it will take bigger brains than mine to figure how to measure
impairment should a toker be pulled over, especially when it becomes
legalized.

But I will say this. I could have chugged a bottle of Alberta vodka
and been more responsive than I was after smoking that joint, the
difference being that blowing into the booze balloon would have
validated my impairment.

The good news is that, unlike the colleague who supplied that joint, I
did not fire it up while behind the wheel and try to emulate her
90-minute commute.

Next time, though, I'll pop the cork of some Mateus, and crank up the
volume of Jim Morrison's Scream of the Butterfly.

But no Bogarting.
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MAP posted-by: Matt