Pubdate: Thu, 05 Feb 2015
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Pete McMartin
Page: 5

WHO DECIDES WHICH VICES ARE OK?
=09
Government: Time will level the playing field between sinners and saints

Dear friends, let us sin.

Though it's odd, isn't it, how our public view of sin differs
radically from our private committing of them? I can't count the
number of times I've heard someone rail on the evils of drugs or booze
when I know that same person had enthusiastically participated in some
form of mind-altering pharmacology. Sin leads not just to hell but
hypocrisy. Let him cast the first stone who has not yet been stoned
himself.

Even odder is our prioritization of our vices. The more damaging they
are to us, the more we consider them as the acceptable status quo.

In Wednesday's paper, for example, we ran a story about the B.C.
government's unveiling of a new plan to deal with gambling addiction.

Well, that's nice, if egregiously hypocritical.

The reason: The real addict is the provincial government itself, which
raked in more than a billion bucks last year from gambling. To do so,
it has done everything it can to grow gambling, including licensing
more casinos, allowing ATMs and unrestricted hours of operation in
them, and increasing the number of video lottery terminals by five
times.

The result? The number of gamblers has soared. Most recently, the
Liberals sought to graft one vice onto another by having the debit
machines at government liquor stores ask patrons, via an electronic
readout on the machine's screen, if they would like to buy a lottery
ticket. I always decline: it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I have
trouble swallowing my own hypocrisies much less the ones sanctioned by
my government.

Also in The Sun this week, we ran a story on how Vancouver's
unlicensed medical marijuana dispensaries are increasingly relying on
illegal suppliers for their product. Yet in the legal limbo in which
these dispensaries must operate, it's no wonder the criminal element
would see a business opportunity here.

Nonetheless, the dispensaries, unlike our casinos, could be said to be
doing some real good, at least to those patients who find relief from
their pain and suffering. In that sense, it's not a vice they're
selling, but a godsend.

Despite that fact, and the fact that legalized booze, tobacco and
gambling wreak inestimably more havoc on society - which I can attest
to personally, having lost my parents and three of my siblings to
alcoholism or smoking - our federal government continues to demonize
marijuana. While several U.S. states lead the way toward legalization,
our feds continue in their old fogey reefer-madness ways.

The government's stance was most bizarrely stated to me in a
conversation I had recently with Vancouver South Conservative MP Wai
Young. Last year, Young distributed an electionstyle flyer to her
constituents showing a teenager lighting up a joint and, below him,
federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. In the flyer, Young claimed
that Trudeau's support for legalizing pot would make it easier for
children to smoke it.

Trudeau's stand on pot is exactly the opposite, however. He has said
pot is bad for children because their minds are still developing, and
that he wants to legalize and regulate it so it would be harder for
them to get. Young insisted otherwise. "When you legalize something,
it's like saying, 'It's OK to smoke this.' That's the message, the
public message that you're saying to children =C2=85 (and) I don't want u
s,
as a government or a society, saying to people, 'Smoking this stuff is
OK,' because it is so not OK."

Well then, I asked Young, was she and the federal government saying it
was OK for children to drink alcohol, since her party abided the legal
sale of it?

To Young, it wasn't the same thing. Alcohol, she said, was made legal
"a long, long time ago."

Ah, me. One of these days, all our vices will be created equal. It's
just going to take time.
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MAP posted-by: Matt