Canadian Crack

Nick Gillespie | April 16, 2004

First the U.S. governent busts on Canadian lumber--too cheap, they say, too subsidized; how can our lumberjacks compete?

Now, our feds are taking aim at a new threat to America from the Great White North. (No, not the revival of William Shatner Priceline ads.)

Drug czar John Walters (and yes, we're all awaiting the appointment of a drug czarina one day) is all hopped up on what he's calling the "crack of marijuana":

"Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana and it is a dangerous problem," Walters told reporters in Miami, where he kicked off a campaign to cut marijuana use by Hispanic youths.

"We need to have political leadership in Canada that recognizes the problem," he said. "Addiction is going to spread in Canada dramatically. It has in many places."

The good shit is mostly being grown indoors by Canucks, says Walters, and contains 20 percent to 30 percent THC, as opposed to the old-fashioned, natural "hippie" doobage cultivated back in the day when the Guess Who was topping U.S. charts by railing against American women, war machines, and ghetto scenes. Read the whole thing here.

One awaits the inevitable report of Walters, speaking to a group of Canadian-American youths in Portland, Maine, and bitching about the new, super-duper "marijuana of crack" being smuggled in across our Southern border.

[Thanks to reader Mark Young for the score]

Comments

|4.16.04 @ 1:02AM|#

"pot = crack"

What a crackpot!

|4.16.04 @ 1:45AM|#

The "crack of marijuana"...
Is that what they call stinkweed?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

|4.16.04 @ 2:04AM|#

Speaking of crack, an acquaintance of mine received a shipment of weed that was apparently grown in pure cow manure. It stunk so bad he couldn't give it away. So what does he do? He bakes it into brownies! He actually served brownies that smelled like cow shit! Needless to say, that choice went over like Himler at a Bar Mitzvah. Who says smoking pot doesn't impair your judgement?

|4.16.04 @ 2:10AM|#

I think that saying that marijuana is "crack" is an understatement. Everyone knows that "weed" is as addictive as herione. There are many documented cases of white teenaged girls having sex the very moment they light up. It destroy an otherwise healthy person's sense of right and wrong. There are cases where children killed their parents after being exposed. It's bad enought that, historically, immoral minorites made money off of "grass", but now the business is dominated by terrorists. It's well known that Osama Bin Laden funds his activities directly from the sale of "shit".

|4.16.04 @ 2:35AM|#

I'll bet Osama is really funny when he's stoned.

|4.16.04 @ 3:24AM|#

I'm a lumberjack and I...hey, are you going to eat those?

|4.16.04 @ 5:08AM|#

You can have my dope when you BUY it from my greedy little hands. heh heh heh . . .

|4.16.04 @ 5:55AM|#

This is why it is our duty as Americans to drive SUVs and waste lots of gasoline. I cut and pasted this off the Evil Bastards site:

. . .there are plenty of statistics showing that terrorists are funded by sales of Arabian oil and African diamonds; there are no statistics to support the claim that terrorism is funded by marijuana sales but we know this is true anyway, because our government told us so and our government would never ever lie.

So if we buy less oil the terrorists will have to recoup their losses by selling more drugs and more diamonds, and America will become weak and defeatable because everybody in it will be stoned, staring at their sparkly jewelry and crooning, �It turns light into rainbows! That is so spiritual. I�m, like, close to nature, and one with the universe, now.�

A nightmare scenario indeed. The only way to avoid it is to consume as much oil as we can, and nothing does that more efficiently than an SUV.


http://www.baddaystudio.com/evilsuv.html

|4.16.04 @ 6:16AM|#

Better still, come north to buy a diesel engined truck/SUV. Our diesel up here is so filthy you would not believe. Varoooom!

|4.16.04 @ 6:19AM|#

Pot related ER visits.

No they don't test everybody for drugs.

That costs money you know.

They do ask if you have recently used any drugs (legal or otherwise) or alcohol.

If you are st(oned)upid enough to answer "I smoked some pot..." then your visit is pot related.

Even if you were minding your own business doing bongs in your living room when the car drove thru the wall, it was pot related because you get high.

Michael Cust|4.16.04 @ 6:40AM|#

Marijuana imported from Canada represents something like 3% of all marijuana in the United States, according to the DEA. 30% of the marijuana in the United States comes from Mexico, while 50% is produced in the good 'ol U-S-of-A.
The reason Walters is so focused on denouncing Canada is because it is the biggest political threat to the American drug war welfare state. (A welfare state that employs hundreds of thousands of welfare dependent police officers, prison guards, and addiction counselors). The people here in Canada don't think marijuana is a big deal and most every major newspaper in the country has editorialized in favour of the full legalization of marijuana. Walters is worried about his job, not about the quality of Canadian marijuana.

|4.16.04 @ 7:30AM|#

My president and his administration now likens my religous sacrament to crack. I am deeply offended and feel very betrayed. This is the most anti-American administration I have ever seen.

|4.16.04 @ 9:50AM|#

I had the opportunity to host a pair of vacationing Canucks at my Florida home one winter in the mid 80s. They travelled with some homegrown and had a peculiar way of judging its worth. Reaching into the bag for a quarter-sized bud, one of them would proceed to press it into his forehead. If it stuck, the stuff was good.
It did, and it was.

Mo|4.16.04 @ 10:29AM|#

Isn't this a good thing? Now kids need to smoke less pot to get high. It saves them money and damage to their lungs. Everyone wins. I mean Scotch is 20x more potent than beer, but it's not the scourge of the earth. You just drink less scotch than you do beer.

|4.16.04 @ 10:30AM|#

Addiction is going to spread in Canada dramatically.

Walters said it sold for as much as cocaine..."Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana..."

How does a person get to be drug czar while not having learned that:

1. Neither marijuana nor THC are addictive.
2. Schwag is the "crack of marijuana" - low cost, low quality. Canadian hydro at better than $800 an ounce is hardly what any person knowledgeable about drugs would call "crack".

pot-related emergency room cases

Can anyone tell me what this means? I'm interested to know what characteristics of the encounter determine that the case is "pot-related", and whether there are actual standards, or this is just a collection of like-minded doctors blowing smoke up our asses. Keep in mind this is the same industry that used to tell pregnant women to smoke cigarettes.

|4.16.04 @ 10:35AM|#

How many 'pot-related emergency room cases' were the result of arresting officers, or pot mixed with Alcohol?

We must be exporting all the good stuff, I think I've been gettin ripped off!

|4.16.04 @ 10:38AM|#

"We need to have political leadership in Canada that recognizes the problem," Walters said.

What an asshole! Is he calling for regime change in Canada? We need to have political leadership in the U.S. that recognizes what a dick Walters is -- and what a load of vacuous lies he's pushing.

|4.16.04 @ 10:38AM|#

rst:

If any trace amounts of THC is found in a blood/urine test during an emergency room visit, it is considered "pot related." A piano falls on your head a week after you smoked a jay? Pot related. Slip in the bathtub a week after a puff of Maui Wowie? Pot related. Get hit by lightning while sparking up? Pot related.

Considering THC can be detected in body fluids for weeks, sometimes months, after the last time ingested, it's surprising that the number of "pot related" emergency room visits are so LOW. Frankly, I think a lot of people get false negatives.

|4.16.04 @ 10:46AM|#

Yeah, titus, but with numbers this pliable they probably opted out of saying 90% of hospital cases are marijuana related.

The problem with beasters is it isn't potent enough. Everyone knows all the good weed is domestic.

Fairly frequent commentor|4.16.04 @ 10:49AM|#

In my youth I ran a little enterprise (with a partner) in which I would go to "certain neighborhoods" and buy relatively small amounts of very high quality sh*t from the caribbean, sell it in "other neighborhoods" at a very high price. With those proceeds I would purchase a very high volume of really bad sh*t (real low quality) and return to the "certain neighborhoods" where I would make a tidy profit largely from repackaging. It took maybe four hours a week and paid very well. Since I was a capitalist at heart I almost never dipped into the good sh*t and kept to smoking some small amount of the profits from the low quality stuff.

So my question is: now that I am older and wiser, and haven't touched the stuff in many many years: would you happen to have any contact information regarding our friends north of the border?

|4.16.04 @ 10:51AM|#

"We need to have political leadership in Canada that recognizes the problem," Walters said.

We need to liberate the Canadians from this oppressive freedom of theirs. For a democratic government to relax restrictions on civil liberties in response to pressure from its constituency creates a huge security risk for America. This atrocity must be stopped at all costs, and I do mean all costs because after all, we have a deficit to spend. We're just not doing enough to stop these evil countries from allowing their people to choose to gamble, get a hooker, or smoke marijuana.

MP|4.16.04 @ 10:51AM|#

titus,

That same tactic was used to get "16,000 adverse-event reports" for ephedra.

My in-laws summer in Canada. I guess it's time to pay them a visit.

|4.16.04 @ 10:59AM|#

$800 an ounce?
Jesus H!
My $200/oz. connection is plenty good for this wimp. I mean, how high do you need to get?

|4.16.04 @ 11:01AM|#

"Fairly",

We know it's you, Joe!
Heh heh.

|4.16.04 @ 11:03AM|#

Can't be Joe.
Said he was a capitalist.

|4.16.04 @ 11:06AM|#

"because after all, we have a deficit to spend."

rst's making sharp with the snarky. Hee hee hee.

|4.16.04 @ 11:07AM|#

Not just a capitalist - a supply sider!

|4.16.04 @ 11:22AM|#

"pot = crack"

Way to boost your credibility with the kids there, John. But he's an appointed bureaucrat; he gets paid to lie, and most people realize that.
The depressing this is why a roomful of reporters, most of whom should know better from personal experience, don't laugh him off the stage.

|4.16.04 @ 11:37AM|#

Maybe he smoked them out first.

He is the Drug Czar.

And he was a grunt in Vietnam.

|4.16.04 @ 11:45AM|#

If I was a highschool kid and the drug Keiser said that the pot I was smoking was equivalent to crack then I would probably wonder why I haven't been smoking crack.

|4.16.04 @ 11:55AM|#

Reporters are increasingly complicit in the lies being told these days. It exposes their ignorance of the subject matter they're supposed to be covering, whether it's war or science or entertainment reporting. They merely repeat what they are told, and call it journalism.

|4.16.04 @ 12:07PM|#

Some day, footage of Waters and McCaffrey speeches is going to be used by mj companies in their television ads.

|4.16.04 @ 12:07PM|#

$28 and change a gram? where the hell are kids getting the money for this?

figure with all this afghan liberation shit going on that hashish would be so much more popular in the u.s.

at least with hash you can draw the = crack card and have a few more points in your favor - it's manufactured and, uh...well, it's not *my* analogy. :)

|4.16.04 @ 12:40PM|#

Some other gummit department keeps telling us that Canadian drugs are unreliable. This sounds plenty relaible. Will this be covered by my medicare card? What does AARp say?

SteveInClearwater|4.17.04 @ 10:49AM|#

Actually, the reference to emergency rooms when accurately used is 'marijuana mentions', not 'marijuana related'.

So in the analogy mentioned above, you fall down a ladder and break your wrist and when at the ER you acknowledge pot use, it goes down as a 'mention'. And yes, the number is the most of all illicit drugs because, uh, marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug by about 11 to 1.

But guys like Walters tweak the reference to infer that if marijuana is the most commonly mentioned illicit drug, well then, smoking marijuana will lead you to the ER. It's obscenely twisted logic.

News reporters at such functions are just freakin' lazy, that's all. They should be smart enough to ask the tough questions.

Of course then they must work for editors who will have the sack to run criticism of the Czar and not many do.

|4.19.04 @ 10:12AM|#

Now we know what that leaf on their flag is red.

|8.8.04 @ 7:14AM|#

i know that drugs are straight out wacked but i still sell drugs for the money and the bitches!!!!