SOME IDEAS WE COULD LIVE WITHOUT

Last week I was trying to get press credentials to the IDEAS conference,
the big anti-drug powwow for Vancouver's creme de la creme sponsored by
local real estate mogul Bob Bentall and his wife Lynda in partnership with
the Drug Free America Foundation.

Drug Free America...hee haw...that's a good one.

Why, without addiction to sit-coms, Budweiser, Marlboro's, artificial
sweeteners, slot machines, internet porn and Viagra, the U.S. economy would
flounder. If banks and stockbrokers stopped laundering obvious illegal drug
profits the system would expire for want of fluid cash. The very notion
smacks of treason and terrorism.

Still I was curious. I'd been seeing the inflammatory ads for a few months
decrying "medical" cannabis as a hoax, denouncing drug law liberalization
as pusher propaganda and, astonishingly, declaring that harsher sentences
and zero-tolerance (yawn) would win The War on Drugs.

Now I admire the "never say die" pluck of folks who'll proudly assert
they're winning despite 40-odd years of expensive evidence to the contrary.
Still, 5,000 years of therapeutic use of an herb is a fact, not a hoax. It
works. And the idea that pushers want decriminalization (meaning prices
would tumble and they would make less money) is absurd.

And yet another Parliamentary sub-committee on illegal drugs is grumbling
again that pot use is relatively benign and prohibition costly and
ineffective because...uh...they want to hurt children?

Still, if the creme de la creme say it's so, then I thought I'd at least
try and listen to their IDEAS, so I wrote a smarmy letter to whom it may
concern.

Dear Sirs: I'm sharing parenting duties with a 15-year-old and I've
recently been confronted firsthand with the limitations of the
harm-reduction ideology in practice.

Please call me at your earliest convenience to confirm press credentials.
Yours truly, (blah blah).

Well, I got a call quite smartly from Bob Bentall, who told me that space
was limited and they'd have to turn me down.

"Ah gee, Bob. That's disappointing. It sounds like you've got some great
speakers booked."

"Oh yes, we're very proud. Very proud."

"So how about a day pass then? Or a couple hours to a check out a speaker?"
"Well, you see it's a private function, Brian."

"But you've spent $200,000 on this event. It seems odd you wouldn't want
the press there to propagate your good IDEAS, Bob."

"Well you see, space is limited, Brian. So we've had to turn quite a few
people down."

"So you are allowing some press in?"

"Well, you see it's a private function, Brian."

"Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight, okay Bob. Have yourself a grand little symposium then.
Buh-bye!"

Spurned but undaunted, I took a surf to the Drug Free America Foundation
website just to make sure I was abreast of their cutting edge ideas. Its
opening page graphic welcoming me to Drug Free America showed an idyllic
cluster of buildings: a library, hospital, school, church and factory
surrounded by lush green lawns. But curiously, no people.

I guess half of them are housed in highrise "prisons and drug treatment
centers for profit" shaded in the background, with the other half of the
populace employed as snitches and jailers.

A further search revealed that DFAF is a reincarnation of Straight
Incorporated, the infamous teen drug treatment program chain with extensive
Bush family connections (Eeeek!), that had been successfully sued out of
existence for using violent and abusive brainwashing tactics not out of
place in North Korean prison camps.

Curiosity piqued, I went down to Canada Place on May 1 to see if I could
pull a weasel, but I was distracted by the counter-symposium happening
openly outside. Much free speech and illuminating pamphletry was
distributed to any who would partake.

And the message was: Yeah, cash may give you the power to purchase
publicity. But it can't buy integrity and the majority of Canadians are
educated and bored of the tired, hypocritical U.S. DEA-sponsored lies aimed
at diminishing our dwindling sovereignty.

Hilary Black of the Vancouver Compassion Club was there but had little time
to waste bashing the IDEAS losers. She was on her way to the 2nd National
Community Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics in Portland
(sponsored by, amongst others, The Oregon Nurses Association) to get
together with the real heroes who are pooling their knowledge and
comforting the sick, not jailing them.

Black's Compassion Club was coincidentally celebrating its fifth
anniversary of exemplary medical marijuana distribution to the sick and
grateful, with no police interference or hassles.

Now that's a real IDEA!