Pubdate: Fri, 14 Dec 2012
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact:  http://torontosun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Michael Coren

INSULTING FANATICS: THEY'RE THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE UP THE LEGALIZATION CAMPAIGN

Last week on my television show, we interviewed Jodie Emery, a woman 
known only because her husband Marc is in prison in the United States 
and enjoys the sobriquet Prince of Pot.

She's been on the show twice before, is a little lightweight and, 
typical of many single-issue extremists, indulges in the odd conspiracy theory.

This time I challenged her a little on drug legalization, and her 
answers were thin and predictable.

Not that I am especially opposed to looser drug laws and I really 
couldn't care less about personal cannabis one way or the other.

It's the plight of the privileged, a bourgeois conceit, a perfect 
example of western narcissism and self-obsession.

But here is where it got interesting. Even before the interview 
aired, after Emery tweeted about her rather gentle experience, I 
began to receive tweets and e-mails.

More than 500 of them in the end. I was called "Jew slime," "a fag," 
told that I "should get cancer," called every abusive name you can 
imagine, often with appallingly bad spelling!

Yes, we have the proof.

I care even less about this than about cannabis use, but it does say 
an enormous amount about the dysfunction and fanaticism of the 
legalization campaign.

Frankly, I can understand anger from Muslims, Palestinians or gay 
people when I criticize Islam, defend Israel or oppose same-sex 
marriage. These are vital issues and emotions run high.

But smoking a joint?

And it's not even about that, in fact.

Nobody is going to be arrested for using cannabis at home, those 
dreadfully dull mass smoke-ins that seem to occur all the time prove 
you can be a bore publicly as well.

I know cops who use the stuff, but I don't know cops who arrest 
people for personal use.

The propaganda campaign that a plethora of charges are successfully 
filed because of ordinary people having tiny amounts of cannabis on 
them is mere fantasy.

This is not an ideology or a cause but a habit and an addiction.

Like people campaigning for the right to masturbate. We don't care 
guys, we just don't care.

Hunger matters, injustice matters, war matters, but this and you don't.

Yet we have the scenario of inverse significance.

Activists for African poverty relief, for example - who have every 
right to be mad - tend to be balanced and polite. Yet activists for 
irresponsible drug-use - who have no right to be mad at all - are 
insulting fanatics.

Emery's husband Marc, of course, in 2005 called former Liberal 
justice minister, Irwin Cotler, "a Nazi Jew or Jewish Nazi," so I 
suppose he was either shaped by or shaping his people.

Now this white, wealthy, self-promoter thinks he's a martyr. Sorry 
guy, but there are thousands of poor people in American prisons who 
genuinely deserve help.

Imploding libertarian theories of wanting to legalize drugs so users 
have to buy them from the state and not the free market; students who 
have never contributed a cent to society screaming that they demand 
the right to hallucinate in the street; lies about the potential 
dangers of long-term cannabis use; utter myopia about the realities 
of criminal behaviour and so on and so on.

Grow up or shut up.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom