We can finally smoke one in public. Now, how about a drink?
Without parliamentary debate or official public consultation, Canada criminalized cannabis in 1923. The result of this, at least in my lifetime, was it was smoked pretty much anywhere anyway, including at concerts, behind local pubs and at basically every house party I’ve ever been to, posh or poor.
And between stolen hoots out on the mean streets, we kept our wrists curled inward, just in case any manifestation of authority cruised along to ruin our lives for absolutely no ethical reason whatsoever.
Still, as far as official do’s and don’ts went, police tended to be lenient in the still-illegal pot days — though of course not all criminals were created equally.
Who got busted more visibly taught me an early lesson or two. For example, a group of Indigenous bangers next us at a 1992 Metallica concert were plucked passing around exactly the same thing we were. Blonde and pink and certainly within the law’s high-beam eyesight from the catwalk, we white kids were notably “luckier” to be left alone with our dissipating cloud.
In case you feel defensive about that anecdote, just walk by any group of four or five cops circled around someone on a bench on Jasper or Whyte.
Of course, I’ve been lectured out there, too. Back in the day, one lawman behind Pawn Shop ridiculously deadpanned as I stomped out a pinner: “Arson. Pretty serious charge there.” Hoo boy. Turned out not to be so serious, though — and they eventually let us go. Spoiler: we didn’t murder anyone that night.
And yet, for most of our lives, we were officially warned weed was a dangerous, forbidden drug and that, even if alcohol did way worse things to people, the law was the law.
Except now, that situation’s suddenly flipped in a Freaky Friday way that doesn’t quite compute.
As of last week, if you’re clever enough to navigate various rules about distance from portals and smart enough to know which parks have playgrounds in them, there’s no issue with strolling down the street puffing on the “good stuff ” of bro country songs.
So here’s the obvious question: if we can exist in public puffing a pre-rolled, government-stamped Saturday Afternoon™, is it such a stretch to say we should be allowed to walk the same sidewalk with an open supercan of Canadian?
Why is it liquor — endorsed and advertised ubiquitously on main-drag billboards, on TV, at pro hockey games, and in postlegalization Edmonton — is still considered too taboo to be physically consumed out in the open without direct supervision?
Illegality of invasive drunkenness and wanton destruction, I fully get that. But those things aren’t the same thing as having a drink, the same way a baseball bat isn’t incumbently a gangster’s murder weapon. So why is a freerange drink still illegal?
I’m going to interrupt your yelling out BECAUSE IT’S ALBERTA, WE COULDN’T HANDLE IT with a story. And seeing as it’s a story about drinking beer, what better setting than Belgium?
There’s a lush and beautiful green space in Brussels named Josaphat Park of no staggering importance, though the Kaiser’s men did shoot Edith Cavell down the street during the First World War for helping people.
There was no such terror, however, when I spent long, sunny afternoons sitting in the grass here on an art residency last spring amid young families, singing guitarists and old couples keeping the blood flowing. I made friends, babysat strangers’ kids, and actually did this totally weird thing called “relaxing.”
Alcohol was not just legal in this (or any) unfenced Brussels park, there was an actual pub in its nucleus whose staff had no problem passing out glasses — made of glass! — of Belgian white and fruity kreik, which people would walk off into the field and drink, unsupervised, later returning for refills.
There were no fights, no tumbling rowdies, no anything at all — save the general vibe of a placid Manet painting. (I know he’s French, but if I brought up Belgium’s Magritte you might start thinking of a levitating bowler hat or a malfunctioning reflection, and it really wasn’t like that.)
We’re in anecdotal territory here — your story of drunken hosers isn’t? — but I’ve got dozens of first-hand examples from around the world where having a pint in public doesn’t immediately result in The Purge, including the chattering-robot streets of Tokyo, late-night zocalos in rural Mexico, hanging out on the bustling ancient volcano in Montreal and outside many a German club, where everyone who spoke English did so better than Canadians.
And yet, maybe it’s our general little sibling complex, bring up melting down public booze consumption laws in Edmonton and almost anyone around here thinks we’d beat each other to wallpaper paste five minutes in — an idea certainly egged on by examples of the way brutes behave drunkenly at CFL games or on Whyte Avenue on a Saturday night.
But remember, the vast majority of those people get that way in supposedly contained and supervised environments. Does this mean we should ban drinking in private when security’s watching ? Of course it doesn’t.
To illustrate the liquor situation as a microcosm, think of the hurried binge-drinking phenomenon that happens like clockwork in fenced-off, city-enforced festival beer gardens by people desperate to finish off what they lined up for forever, suddenly pressured to pour it down their gullets so they can see the next thing on the schedule.
But what would that scene be like without the partitions, the capacity-clickers, the tension of arbitrary rules being constantly kicked at, the huffy time limits and the power-tripping guards? Never mind what children absorb, watching their parents lining up for an hour to desperately Gollum their happiness juice.
Remove the pressure cooker walls and it’s less tense, by any definition.
It’s complicated, I know, and making cannabis legal took years, with sneaky little caveats demonstrating that letting bud sneak into our lives wasn’t a deafening horn summoning the Four Horsemen of the Weedpocalypse.
Obviously, given that drinking has been declared scientifically to have no physical benefit whatsoever, the idea of medicinal street alcohol is not going to get off the ground.
But we’re never going to stop doing it, and there are social perks — which can still be fairly policed if people take things too far, just like every other sensible restriction in the world.
Otherwise, as was argued and won with weed, some of that police attention can go to more pressing matters.
But seeing as we can already raise a glass of Pinot Noir on a patio, and as of last week, spark a tightly rolled cheeber on the way to the corner store, it’s certainly time to keep the ball rolling and prove that we can actually handle our outdoor suds.