How to pass a drug test

I guess I should have clarified things right there in the title...

I can't help you if you're on crack or meth or any of that bathtub chemistry-project shit that is going around.

You're on your own. And you're an idiot.

If, on the other hand, your tool of choice is God's own herb, the weed of wisdom, you might want to listen up.

So Buddy who I've known for 40 years has been driving the big rigs from Alaska to Brownsville, from Long Beach to Saint John for about 5 million miles by now, and I know for a fact that at least 4 and a half of those the dude was under the influence of the weed of wisdom.

No, it's not Willy Nelson.

So the reason Buddy never gets nabbed on a dope test is that he keeps a supply of clean pee in his freezer. He gets the call to come in for a random pee test, he's got it figured out to the minute how to get that urine sample that's been in the freezer for six months to body temp in the time it takes to drive to the lab.

That's been working for 40 years.

And there hasn't been an accident in 5 million miles.

BC government takes another run at the Hells Angels

Many a government careerist has attempted to make a name for himself by taking on the Hells Angels. The attorney general of BC is giving it another go after a similar attempt to seize biker property a few years ago has been bouncing around the courts ever since.

This time around the government is trying to seize some valuable Vancouver real estate that happens to belong to the club. The modus operandi is the same as last time. The Hells Angels are a criminal group, therefore anything they own must be, by definition, the fruit of their criminal activity. Ergo, we can seize their property under proceeds-of-crime legislation.

The big problem with this approach is that the Hells Angels are so much else besides being a "criminal group". Check out their website. They're a social club, a motorcycle club, a service club, and yes, once in a while somebody gets clubbed to death, but the point is that there is so much more to the HAMC than a "criminal group."

I think it would be more productive to view the organization as a philosophical society. Some of the lads are criminals, others are not. All of them share a political philosophy that might be characterized as "radical libertarianism."

As radical libertarians, they tend to have a rather loose interpretation of what the rest of us might refer to as "the rule of law." Some of them may even take advantage of the business opportunities that the more idiotic rules of law present, and find themselves in the drugs trade.

This is of course not unique to the Hells Angels. Lots of folks take advantage of stupid drug laws to make money in the drugs business. Most of them don't even own Harleys!

So if those government types are so worried about the Hells Angels as a "criminal group" maybe they should focus their attention on doing something about the stupid drug laws.

British Columbia's chief medical officer comes out in favor of legal pot

Dr. Perry Kendall today joined four former BC attorneys general and four former mayors of Vancouver in calling on the federal governemnt to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana.

The plea is likely to fall on deaf ears in Ottawa however. The Harper gang is busy trying to turn the clock back instead of forward. Part of their new get-tough-on-crime agenda includes mandatory prison sentences for anyone found guilty of cultivating more than five pot plants.

Kendall makes the well-known point that the war on drugs has been an abject failure. He notes that in spite of the estimated five billion dollars that Canada has spent fighting the war on drugs in the past ten years, marijuana remains universally accessible.

He joins a growing chorus of senior politicians and law enforcement types who have dared question the prevailing anti-pot orthodoxy.

Just today a former President of Columbia and the chief medical officer of Nova Scotia also went on the record calling for an end to the "war on drugs".

Saluting Wally Tucker; the original Marijuana Messiah

When Marc Emery was just a twinkle in his daddy's eye, there was already a Prince of Pot. His name was Wally Tucker.

My buddy Kipling is a relative of Wally, much as I am a relative of Captain von Trapp. And while I'm fairly tight with Kipling, I have to say he's never invited me to a family do where the Tuckmeister is in attendance. He's never actually invited me to anything, come to think of it.

In the event, Walter Tucker started a religion. He started it just around the time he was going to court for his first possession offence. The "Church of the Universe". Even if you never heard of it, you're a member, at least if you live in this universe. He did a nice job scoping out his territory. Get's in front of Hammered Hank down in Guelph, and pulls out this achingly compelling yarn about how he is a minister at the Church of the Universe, where the sacrament just happens to be the weed 'o wisdom, and he's being persecuted for his religious beliefs.

You have to admit, not even Marc Emery could top that one.

Hangin' Hank pondered the merits of Wally's defence for about ten seconds, then gave him the same sentence he gave every pot peddler who appeared in front of him. Five years of free room and board at Millhaven. Not what Wally had in mind.

So Wally circles the religious freedom wagons and gets the funding from wherever to take his case all the way to the supreme court. Long story short, at least it delayed his Millhaven vacation for about 15 years. The wheels of justice do turn really really slow up here in the Great White North.

We've come a long way in our attitude to the weed since the seventies. There have been many champions along the way. Marc Emery is certainly one of them. But the next time you twist one up, remember Wally Tucker.