by Bernie Bates
Smoking the peace pipe has been a part of Native culture going back for countless generations. Some tribes smoked the tobacco leaf, other brothers light up buffalo dung and many merry bands exploited nature’s marijuana plant. Maybe that’s were the term ‘peace’ pipe came from … and who knows, maybe even the phrase: “Wow, that’s some good shit!”
Anyone who owns a house with a lawn, knows just how hard it is to eradicate the common dandelion. A person can spend much wampum on herbicides, fertilizers and assorted lawn tools, but, as sure as water flows and the grass grows – there’ll be another yellow flower to mock you, come next spring. So why do the boys in the halls of power think for a minute, that they can kill the marijuana plant with the wave of a judge’s gavel? They may just as well pull down their pants and pee on a forest fire.
Didn’t our learned leaders learn anything from the era of prohibition? Let me refresh your memories: the puritans tried to rid the new World of the evils of alcohol? But, people still drank from the stills in the hills and the bathtub gin flowed like water – remember? Another thing that flowed was cash, illegal cash and lots of it, and who profits from illegal ventures? Not the honest, hard working, tax paying shmucks – that’s for sure. Maybe someone can write to the elected ones in the big tepee and tell them Al Capone may be dead, but there’s a whole new breed of bad ass’ making duffle bags of payola from the sale of the ‘can do’ cannabis plant!
If a person wants to do something bad and badly enough, they will succeed. You know this from your own youth, don’t you? Didn’t you, too, hang out with the ‘wrong’ crowd; kiss, drink, smoke, sex, cheat, steal, cuss and then lie about some, if not all, of the aforementioned? Even yours truly smoked a little weed, when I was a foolish forty-nine year old punk. Good ol’ Mary Jane, has been passed around for some time now. Do any of these words sound familiar; bogart, reefer, bong, roach, Cheech and Chong? If you remember some of these words and if you have a few grey hairs in your underwear – then why in the hell don’t we elders, vote to legalize and then tax the livin’ shit out of this weed?
“But the children, think of the poor children!” Yeah, yeah … pot is a bad thing, bla, bla, bla – so is a damned cheese burger, if you eat enough of them. Hell, even plain old water can kill ya: do you remember a radio contest, where this lady died, after drinking copious amounts of H2o? Booze wipes out thousands of lives, yearly, cigarets stink and S.T.Ds are spreading faster than a twenty dollar hooker, yet people continue to get drunk and then light up after having unsafe sex, every single day of the week. The reality of it is, we all realize it’s impossible to zip-it, butt-it and put a cork in it!
But, what about all the studies, that prove that marijuana, leads to harder drugs, brain damage and infertility? My answer to that is: If a person is stupid enough to get hooked on other drugs, chances are they already have an addictive trait to begin with. It may be true brain cells die when exposed to marijuana, but if you have to go, you may as well go happy. Impotency? If that word doesn’t scare you straight, nothing will.
I would never promote the use of anything harmful, to anyone. But, with that said; I’ve walked the path of addiction – both alcohol and marijuana and I’ve experienced the worst of both, so I feel I can give you the good’s and the bad’s, from a point of view, I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. Of the two monsters, I’d say booze is the one that will do you the most harm, it makes a person both brave and foolish – a very bad combination, especially when mixed with inexperience and youth. Whereas, pot, makes a person smell like a burned gym sock, act goofy and talk gibberish – it’s by far the lesser of the two evils. Or we could spend millions and millions, to tell teenagers to: “Just say, no!”
THE END
Dear reader: Please feel free to contact, B. H. Bates at: beeinthebonnet@shaw.ca
