What if smokers acted like tokers?
No one would appreciate that: 4/20 ‘activists’ need to start treating their event more like the dope bazaar it really is
Hey, all you smokers out there — not you, Pot Nerd, I’m talking to the real He Men and She Women of smoking.
I mean the oft-demonized aficionados of unfiltered who can cheerily drone on for hours about the soothing effects of a deep drag in a stressful moment; about the weight-loss benefits of appetite suppression; about the esthetics of the Lovat pipe versus the $30 Cuban cigar; about how much better for your health smoking is compared to, say, hand-feeding grizzly bears; about the employment spinoffs in agriculture, advertising, health care, First Nations smuggling and organized crime.
Really, who the heck are a bunch of wussy diners to tell smokers that they don’t like the fragrance of a Camel seasoning their romantic zabaglione? Or, having banned smokers from the hospital wards, to now be driving them from the doorways, sidewalks, parks and beaches, too!
So, I say, time for these oppressed pariahs to reject their marginalization by public shaming from Happy Planet health enthusiasts and fearmongering medical professionals conspiring against the tobacco biz.
The moment is right for smokers to hold a liberation rally and reclaim the rightful place in the sun for navy cut cigarettes and flavoured cigarillos. If the Pot Zealots can pull it off with their 4/20 demo, why not stage a monster Cough-a-thon for smokers?
So who’s for it? There are more than 370,000 current smokers in Metro, how about a demo? Even if only one in three turns out — kind of like the usual voting turnout in municipal elections — you can put 125,000 in the streets. Whoa! That would be bigger than the Sun Run or a Stanley Cup Final!
Pick a day. How about a Monday? Pick a location. No parks, public beaches or even downtown doorways, those are all illegal. But Robson at Howe seems like a tried and true epicentre for causing massive traffic tie-ups in the downtown core during business hours.
Permit? Who needs a permit? Hey, the Pot Zealots don’t bother, they just take over downtown streets, force public facilities to close, cause traffic gridlock, impair access by shoppers to retail merchants, shop B.C. Bud by the bushel, flood already over-taxed emergency wards with self-inflicted casualties and preach the merits of legalizing pot while the police hang around taking photos for future identification purposes and municipal authorities shrug off complaints.
Mayor Gregor Robertson says nothing can be done about the frustrating inconvenience caused by the 25,000 who attend 4/20. It’s a protest, he says, not a marketing event, although downtown merchants liken it to a gigantic farmer’s market for pot transactions, Sun reporters tell us.
Mind you, now we learn the city plans to regulate and license dispensaries for medicinal marijuana, restrict locations away from schools and so on. It’s just the mass street sales that are unregulated.
Cities like Winnipeg require permits and proper insurance for 4/20 events which are discreetly managed for public safety, sanitation, liability and post-event cleanup just like other street festivals. This helps preserve the right to protest while minimizing disruption and cost.
However, here in what Statistics Canada tells us is the throbbing heart of national unhappiness, every entitled dissident musters a lame excuse for dumping the consequences of his or her “protest” onto the long-suffering citizen.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against street festivals, protests or pot.
I don’t smoke. Don’t like it. Don’t recommend it. But I don’t hate smokers. I restrict my non-prescribed drug intake to an occasional small whisky. As for pot, I confess that I once ate hash brownies — what was I thinking; oh, I wasn’t thinking — then played 80 minutes of rugby for UVic’s Vikes against SFU. That was 50 years ago. I must have survived. This being Vancouver, blame memory loss on headbanging, not the um, you know.
But I’m for legalizing dope of all kinds, managing it to reduce harm and putting the black market gangsters out of business. Just can’t find much enthusiasm for the sanctimonious, mythologizing nonsense that the socalled marijuana movement spouts in justification of its promotion of what’s essentially just one more giant self-righteous smoker’s ball.
So, yes, we know all the purported benefits of marijuana as hyped by the legalized pot lobby which seems indifferent that it might ruin a lot of other people’s Monday downtown. And, really, it would be fascinating to see how city authorities responded if all the smokers in Metro mobbed Robson Square and closed the business district under a selfindulgent haze of blue.