Pubdate: Wed, 05 Jun 2002
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Page: R2
Copyright: 2002, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Lynn Crosbie

TESTING POSITIVE WITH THE STONER DEMOGRAPHIC

Do you spend a lot of time worrying about the toxic component of your urine 
or hair? The pH levels in your homegrown Big Buddha? Or the precise 
location of your nearest doob-positive criminal attorney?

Or when "Stoner of the Year" Snoop Doggy Dogg urges you to "blaze up one of 
them blunts," do you reach for the Big Bambus? If so, you must already be 
familiar with High Times, the magazine devoted to pot and its squiffy-eyed 
devotees.

For novices like me, whose behaviour, during my rare experiences with the 
drug, parallels that of Magnum P. I.'s during one of his laboured Vietnam 
flashbacks, the magazine was a revelation.

While High Times -- whose circulation is roughly 200,000, with a strong 
Web-site constituency -- maintains the legal stance that it does not 
"encourage the illegal use of any of the products within," the editors must 
have a very odd definition of the word "encourage."

Between paranoid advertisements for countersurveillance equipment and 
vacuum-sealed urine-substitution kits ("Let Us Pee for You!" the copy 
exclaims), the pages are laden with glossy photographs of pot plants: The 
centrefold this month features a Mango plant, its leaves dewy and moist, 
its lavender hair shining, and prehensile.

I am sure that to the average pothead, this delectable, taboo centrefold is 
encouraging, the way that triple-layer-chocolate-cake spreads stimulate the 
disciples of Jenny Craig; the way that male or female pulchritude incites 
the sexually bereft.

It is the illegality of the plant that gives it its cachet: High Times is 
like a substance-user's porno: fetishistic, perverse and geared to that 1 
per cent, like outlaw bikers, who choose to live in a haze above the law.

Yet, while reading High Times, it is difficult to recall that pot is 
illegal. There are a few paragraphs of agitprop devoted to the 
now-exhausted comparison between drinking and smoking, and most of the 
plant growers or users photographed are wearing hoods or hiding their heads 
in their crops.

I wondered, after staring at page after page of, to me, boring leaves and 
twigs, what it is about pot smokers that they would be entranced by a moody 
shot of, for example, seven mason jars of hydroponic grass, stacked beside 
an acoustic guitar.

I cannot imagine a boozer absorbing him or herself in the likes of Rummy 
Monthly, drooling over pictures of sticky glasses and bouquets of barley, 
any more than I can envision a crackhead wasting valuable pipe time looking 
at images of pretty white rocks.

Pot smokers are, however, by nature slow and oddly methodical people, whose 
brief attention spans tend to be captivated by the principles of 
organization, and visual stimulation. They are also tediously, and often 
erroneously, addict-provocateurs whose logic regarding their substance of 
choice is fiercely skewed.

While I do believe in the decriminalization of pot, and am, for aesthetic 
reasons, less excited by its legalization (the presence of head shops alone 
is a depressing enough archive of the bad old days of Styx screaming "Light 
up Everybody!"), I take exception to the ways in which the pro-pot argument 
is constructed.

Its medicinal uses are often evoked, as if every bong owner is a 
righteously suffering glaucoma patient: I imagine Elvis used the same logic 
while scarfing the Dilaudids and morphine he referred to as his "medicine." 
And pot's analogous relationship to alcohol is also touted as an 
indestructible argument for legalization, which is sound, on one level, and 
puerile on another. If drinking is worse than pot, as the tie-dye set 
maintains, then why not advocate for radical changes regarding liquor 
legislation? To rest on the point of relative evils is something like 
arguing, like a grounded teenager, that what Little Timmy did was way worse.

Finally, what High Times and other pot advocates fail to address is the 
obvious brain damage caused by the drug. While scientists are finally 
making clear connections between pot use and mental deterioration, 
hemp-fomenters refuse to view their filthy addiction as of one many filthy 
addictions, none of which merits praise.

It is one thing to be a willful substance user; it is quite another to 
dignify one's white-horse ride around the margins of culture.

Ultimately, High Times does have a shrewd grasp of its stoned demographic, 
as anyone who has ever tried to talk to a pot smoker would know. It is 
precisely this person who, between the bursts of inappropriate laughter, 
lip licking and heavy insights, will suddenly become absorbed in the orange 
hue of a Spice Brothers bud, its dreamy fronds, like, its beauty, man.

For those of us who don't have to carry around a heated vial of a 
stranger's urine, or sweat the pigs when they pass, life may be not be as 
high, but swinging low is sweeter, no matter how little we walk through the 
doors of perception and lie on the floor, scrounging for Doritos.
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