Toronto Star Praises
Documentary About Activist Chris Clay:
"No politician has the gumption to lobby for ganja."
(Marijuananews note: Just try to imagine a
review like this being published in a major DEAland paper calling for the legalization of
marijuana as the obvious conclusion. This is the second time recently that the Star has
allowed a staffer to editorialize against marijuana prohibition. The other was a flat
defiance of the laws on medical marijuana by a disabled writer.
See
Quadriplegic Toronto
Star Reporter Writes:
"I smoke marijuana because it improves my medical condition considerably.
And I refuse to feel fear or shame because of that."
This is a lighter subject, but with a very blunt conclusion. This
kind of journalism obviously impacts the political process.)
See
Debate In The
Canadian House of Commons On Medical Marijuana
Would Shame DEAland Congress, If They Weren’t Shameless.
STONED HELPS CLEAR THE AIR OF HY-POT-CRISY
June 1, 1999
From The Toronto Star
Section: Television
lettertoed@thestar.com
http://www.thestar.com/
By Antonia Zerbisias
If Canada ever decriminalized marijuana, there wouldn’t be an unmolested bag of
Doritos left in the country.
And that’s just about the worst thing one can say about the weed, as Stoned:
Hemp Nation On Trial attests.
This fast-paced documentary, which first aired last year on Newsworld as the Ross
Rebagliati scandale was firing up, gets another run tonight, on Channel 57 at 8.
It’s the story of Chris Clay, the London, Ont., man who, in
1995, was arrested in his head shop after selling marijuana plant cuttings to an
undercover cop. His inventory was confiscated, his staff busted too.
Clay, who never hurt more than a panful of fudge brownies, was looking at a life
sentence for trafficking.
Meanwhile, an armed robbery was going down at a nearby bank but the police were too
preoccupied with rounding up a bunch of potheads and their hemp t-shirt inventory than
gunmen.
And so it goes with the marijuana laws in this country, despite the 1972 LeDain
Commission report which, according to the University of Western Ontario’s associate
dean of law Robert Solomon "debunked the mythology" of pot leading to harder
drug use, forcing up the crime rate, etc.
See
Head of 1971
Canadian Commission Recommending Decriminalization of Marijuana: "Stands By
Report"
To drive home the point, filmmakers Russell Bennett and Sarah Jane Flynn cut their film
with clips from the hilarious 1936 anti-pot flick, Reefer Madness, which depicts
women selling their bodies in return for a doobie.
Stoned boasts some impressive interviews, including those with pharmacologists,
criminologists and even the judge in the Clay case, all of whom agree that marijuana is
not only less addictive than caffeine or nicotine but results in less destructive
behaviour than alcohol.
Of course Stoned is one-sided. Only one politician is shown saying that marijuana is a
menace to society.
But maybe the reason for that apparent one-sidedness is that there’s little
evidence that the laughing cabbage will hurt you more than make you forget what you meant
to say at the start of your sentence.
And, since the Addiction Research Foundation helped fund
this film, you have to figure that not many facts were left out.
Fact is, at least according to Stoned, the only thing standing between Canadians and
legal cannabis is a lack of legislative will.
No politician has the gumption to lobby for ganja.
Now if only all the politicians, journalists and boomer-age parents in this country
stood up and admitted to having inhaled, the air in Canada would be a whole lot clearer.
Copyright: 1999, The Toronto Star
Supported