The Drug Scene

I don't do drugs. Some years ago I did pot a few times. The first couple of times it was a hoot, but subsequently the effect was less pleasant, it just made me feel weird. In one instance I imagined being Plastic Man, I was elongated like taffy. I didn't like it, and I haven't tried it since, except for the occasional drag if a joint was passed around socially. I haven't tried any other drug, mainly because I don't see the need. A person should be able to get by without artificial stimulation.

Now that sounds very moralistic, I know, and I shouldn't be the one to talk because I've been high on alcohol many times, but it was never because I "needed" it to drown my sorrows or "settle my nerves". I just had one too many, period. I rarely have more than one or two beers or two glasses of wine, or the occasional brandy. My days of heavy imbibing are long behind me.

But to get on with it. The drug laws of any country I know are just stupid, as most people would agree. Those laws don't stop drug use (prohibition never works and often has a contrary effect) but merely ensures that drugs obtained illegally can be polluted with foreign substances often dangerous. Government acceptance and regulation, as with alcohol and tobacco, would be preferable. Which brings me to an article I ran across recently. The prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, published a "landmark study" which listed tobacco and alcohol as more dangerous than pot and ecstasy. They studied a list of twenty substances and rated them on three factors, 1.) physical harm to the user, 2.) potential for addiction, 3.) impact on society.

Topping the list are heroin and cocaine. Next come barbiturates, street methadone, and alcohol. Tobacco comes in ninth, cannabis eleventh and ecstasy is near the bottom of the list. See the article here. It was surprising to see ecstasy so low on the list. It turns out that ecstasy may have a beneficial effect on Parkinson's Disease.
You can see a long article on ecstasy here.
Now for alcohol. Government liquor stores at one time made it a chore to buy beer or liquor. A form had to be filled out. The clerk would disappear and come back with a bottle in a paper bag, you would then sneak out and drive straight home. A license had to be purchased in some jurisdictions. My, how that has changed. Governments have discovered what revenues can be had from booze, (And gambling.) so drinking is encouraged in various ways, and the consequences are not all salutary. While the LCBO, Liquor Control Board of Ontario advises its patrons to "drink responsibly", it does all it can to push its product.

Cleansing after Bush

I got a charge out of this.
The Mayas are setting an example. Can the U.S. and the world follow suit?

Quebec Election

This week the three party leaders debated on TV. I didn't see it but I read about it next morning. As usual, nobody had a "clear-cut win", but the party leader most people are talking about is Mario Dumont of the ADQ - Action Démocratique du Québec. He's very popular in the province, or should I say québecois nation?

It's often been said that history repeats itself. Well, sometimes no, sometimes yes, imperfectly, but I see in Dumont the spirit of Maurice Duplessis and his Union Nationale, which ruled Quebec from 1944 to 1960. I'm old enough to remember that. As a matter of fact, I was a Quebec resident in 1960 when I voted for Jean Lesage and his Liberals who ushered in the Quiet Revolution. I remember the cries of Scandale!! Scandale!! Duplessis was, like Dumont, an "autonomiste", an indistinct word. Autonomy without separation, meaning, I suppose, that by not separating, they would still be able to put the squeeze on Ottawa for money.

Duplessis squeezed pretty hard and he ran a tight ship. His cabinet members jumped when he said jump. On one occasion when his finance minister droned on at length, Maurice looked at him and said "Sit down, Lucien, that's enough". (It may have been another name, I forget.) He sat down. There are a number of such anecdotes in a book simply called "Duplessis" by none other than Conrad Black. It was published in 1979, is a good read if you take into account Black's social views. It's still listed on Amazon.ca. Black praises Duplessis for modernizing the province with rural electrification, roads and bridges, especially in ridings that voted the right way. The message was clear - you want your road paved, you know what to do.

Like Duplessis, Dumont, who shares the social views of Stephen Harper, appeals to the conservatism of rural and small town Quebec. Now that separation seems to have lost some of its appeal, it becomes a potent force.
I'll be watching on election night.

Our Prime Minister

Stephen Harper will be the leader of the Canadian government for a long time to come, I'm afraid. He is an ideologue of the far right but, as he is leading a minority government, he is posturing as a moderate and carrying it off with some success according to the latest polls.

Someone close to me insists he is stupid, but I disagree. His ideas and policies may have sad consequences for the average citizen, but the average citizen is not his concern. He is a brilliant strategist. He is cagey and cunning, unscrupulous, amoral, his promises mean nothing. He will resort to sleaze if necessary, as the party has done in the aspersions concerning Liberal leader Stéphan Dion's dual citizenship, as if it matters. (His mother was born in France.) He has split the Liberal party on the issue of the Afghan mission, winning Ignatieff to his side, and on the same sex marriage issue. The Bloc Quebecois set a trap for him by proposing Quebec as a nation, hoping to embarrass Harper's Quebec members, but Harper turned the tables on them by proposing a Quebec nation within Canada. There was an article in Saturday's Globe and Mail which explores his tactics and modus operandi.

Despite his progressive posturing, his true colours show. He canceled the Liberals' legislation which had money for more day care centres, instead giving $100/month to parents of small children. This does nothing to create more care centres, but caused some of them to raise their rates even to the whole hundred bucks in the odd case. And the money is taxable. Then there's the GST. Lowering the rate from 7% to 6% or 5% will save very little for the poorer citizen, but will be significant on the price of a new Mercedes. And the GST establishment will be as large as ever but collect less money. That's efficiency? And then he quietly canceled the Liberal income tax cut while reducing the basic exemption.

But the electorate doesn't seem to mind. They like Harper because he is strong and decisive. (So were Stalin and Hitler.) He has a "Prime Ministerial" bearing. God help us! I think it was Lincoln who said you could fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Well, I don't know. I'd say that you can fool most of the people most of the time. When they finally wake up, as they did with Diefenbaker, as they did with Mulroney, as they're doing now with Bush, it's too late.