Yesterday’s pot was just as potent as today’s pot

It was the semi-hallucinogenic Acapuico Gold that sustained me through a terrible The Doors concert at Dinner Key Auditorium (which my father built) where I saw a staggering drunk Jim Morrison grab his crotch (it was zipped up) and look down to a cute young thing standing in front below the stage and declare: “I’m thinkin’ o’ you, honey.”

By Frank Touby –

Jim Morrison at Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami

Margaret Wente, the often-brilliant Globe & Mail columnist, obviously went through her youth without scoring any good weed. Otherwise why would she have written not long ago that today’s pot isn’t like the stuff your father toked? You’ve got to ask, just what was Maggie smoking? In her view, today’s grass is nearly as deadly as smack. That smacks of a naïve, toke-deprived youth spent scoring $20 baggies cut with oregano and feeling cool.

I quite vividly recall, as a young man in Miami, the epic grasses Acapulco Gold, Panama Red and Pompeii Purple. The Red could last for two days, ditto the Purple. I doubt that’s available nowadays. Just as well.

It was the semi-hallucinogenic Gold that sustained me through a terrible Doors concert at Dinner Key Auditorium (which my father built) where I saw a staggering drunk Jim Morrison grab his crotch (it was zipped up) and look down to a cute young thing standing in front below the stage and declare: “I’m thinkin’ o’ you, honey.”

The City of Miami Police Department blew it all out of proportion—perhaps in those days because the girl was white, like the entire audience. Cops alleged that he was unzipped and exposed himself. Didn’t happen.

It’s been quite a while since my last toke and it made me uncomfortably paranoid, which is a side effect of pot unless you get well accustomed to it on a regular basis. I don’t have that kind of time any more.

This brings me to the point, which is our government’s corrupt pot policy. It panders to the Americans who keep the easy-to-grow and relatively harmless herb prosecuted as a felony so it stays expensive and helps finance the CIA and other covert operations. They can’t have the public seeing their budgets. Otherwise people could guess what operations the spooks can afford to launch.

The Iran-Contra scandal of the Ronald Reagan years involved funding U.S. intelligence operations with proceeds from guns, cocaine and marijuana the covert government types smuggled into the U.S.

Canada certainly shouldn’t have such covert operations that meddle in the affairs of other countries to help big corporations. (Nor should the Americans.)

So the only reason for laws regarding marijuana here should be issues of public health and safety.

I have somewhat changed my view of everyone walking around joyfully, harmlessly stoned after I assigned a reporter who was a compassion-club member to cover a meeting.

Thankfully I was at the same meeting and also took notes. It was as if we had attended two different sessions.

None of the names were identical; the quotes from the reporter must have been made up or hallucinated. We paid the reporter for attending, but used my coverage. There are many jobs you just can’t do stoned. But that can be legally handled in the same manner as apprehending someone doing a job drunk or being in public that way.

It doesn’t call for arresting a person for possession of an unlit joint any more than it does for possession of an unopened bottle of booze in a public place.

Let folks grow it and the price drops to zero, thus keeping pot smokers away from drug dealers altogether.

It also loses its counter-culture cool.