Source:   The Globe and Mail
] Date:     July 26, 1997, page C21 (The Arts)
Contact:  The drug culture gets wired

NETCOTICS / Web pages promoting everything from marijuana to cocaine are
blossoming all over the unregulated Internet.

Saturday, July 26, 1997
By Alexandra Gill
The Globe and Mail

A columnist with Cannabis Canada magazine who goes by the pen name of
Webguy recently shared a chuckle with his readers. On May 15, the
Saskatoon police had raided a local music store, confiscating printed
editions of the periodical. Technically, Cannabis Canada, like other
literature promoting the use of marijuana, is illegal in Canada under
section 462.2 of the Criminal Code. But the code is rarely invoked.
Webguy called the incident 'meddlesome' and told his readers that he was
"grinning sardonically and beaming with pride" because that very same
magazine was about to be posted  word for word  in electronic form
on the Hemp B.C. Web site on the Internet, making it available to
readers who make more than onemillion hits on the site each month.
"Someone tried to stop this from being read," he wrote. "And now it can
be read worldNetwide."

As political and social organizations spend huge sums waging a
propaganda campaign against substance abuse, a grassroots network of
drug advocates around the world are fighting back from behind their
computer keyboards. Drug promoters  and even a few pushers  are
taking their cause to cyberspace, where anyone with a telephoneline
connection can tune in and learn about turning on.

Take your pick of the big search sites such as Yahoo or AltaVista, enter
"legalize marijuana" as a query and you will be overwhelmed by the
number of matches  anywhere from 2,245 to 8,000. Near the top of the
list, or of virtually any other marijuana search, there will probably be
a listing like Web of Weed (www3.sympatico.ca/chekus). Jump to the
site's home page with the click of a mouse button and find yourself
staring at a bouncing neon pot plant or an animated face with blinking,
bloodshot eyes.

Then choose from a variety of other pages that include topics such as
drug culture, cannabis history, marijuana publications, activists and
legislation, and commercial sites.

A wide assortment of drug paraphernalia, sales pitches and advice
abound, including: bongsmoking etiquette, which offers advice on
puffing from a communal pipe ("one haul at a time, please  and hosts
should provide guests with a spittoon"); a magicmushroom picker's
guide, describing where, when and how to track down your own supply of
the hallucinogen; a shroomtrip log, where a visitor can publicly record
his or her last fungal foray; a raver's guide for latenight dance
demons, with emergency procedures for a speedtrip gone sour;
growyourowncannabis kits (complete with seeds, mesh pots and
fishpowder nutrients); a drug library; reports debunking marijuana
myths; judicial summaries; excerpts from the Criminal Code; blownglass
pipes; a ceramic water bong molded in the shape of the grim reaper;
digital pocketsized scales; grape flavoured detox drinks; and rolling
papers scented in strawberry, lemon or coconut. And don't forget hemp,
the fabric and food of choice within the cannabis culture. The textile
is twisted into watch bands and hair scrunchies, while the seeds are
ground and baked into burgers and granola.

As you near the end of this long, strange trip you might find yourself
back at Hemp B.C. (www.hempbc.com), maintained by the publishers of
Cannabis Canada and part of the vanguard of the movement to legalize pot
for recreational purposes in Canada.

"We find the Web site to be a very useful tool," said Dana Larsen,
editor of Cannabis Canada, from his Vancouver office. "You don't need a
big publishing device and a lot of money to get your information out
there."

In the past two years, stores of at least five Canadian hemp merchants
have been raided and were personally charged with offences ranging from
the cultivation of a narcotic to trafficking in marijuana seeds. But
it's not so easy to close down a Web site.

"I imagine it would be difficult to apply section 462.2, [of the
Criminal Code], although it's never been tried," said Alan Young, a law
professor at Osgoode Hall in Toronto. "The Internet isn't a printed
matter, and as long as it's not being used for commercial purposes, the
law wouldn't apply."

With its Web site, Cannabis Canada can spread what Larsen calls
"truthful" messages about marijuana to the people around the world who
visit his site more than a million times each month. Larsen says he
wants only to balance "the establishment's" former monopoly on drug
information. "We only want to show the world what we're doing," he said.
"We're just nice, responsible people who like marijuana."

Although the vast majority of drugrelated sites on the Internet are,
like Larsen's, advocacy banners for the legalization of soft drugs,
others aren't so benign.

In one online discussion group, a contributor explained that freebasing
is "a very bad thing to do for your body and mind." Nevertheless, he
provided a freebase recipe  containing cocaine, ammonia and ethyl
ether, which are inhaled  along with a caution about potential
explosions.

And although the Internet is a little too public as a forum for
trafficking, there are several Canadian sites that sell marijuana seeds,
still an illegal activity. Some seeds sell for up to $300 a gram.

"We're really losing the war on the the Internet," Kellie Foster, a
spokeswoman for the community AntiDrug Coalitions of America, recently
told the New York Times. "We've got to get out there and we're not."

David Rosenbloom, president of Join Together, a Boston organization
helping community groups fight drug and alcohol abuse, also told the
Times that the marketers of marijuana seeds and drug paraphernalia are
copying alcohol and tobacco companies by promoting their products with
glitzy Web sites  presumably targeted at kids.

Indeed, at the High Times Web site (www.hightimes.com), there's a
cartoon on that depicts a Popeyelike character called PotPey getting
stoned with his chums. "I'm mellow to the finish, 'cuz I smokes me
spinach," announces the blearyeyed sailor.

"The cartoons are not featured on the site as an enticement," countered
John Holstrom, the High Times publisher. He added that kids who come on
to the site know what to expect because, unlike a broadcast, the
Internet is not a passive medium. "It's not something that invades your
home. When you go on, you usually find what you're looking for."

The alarm bells aren't ringing as loudly in Canada, however, where
attitudes toward marijuana and some other drugs are generally more
liberal. A study published by the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse
(CCSA) last year indicated that 27 per cent of Canadians think
possession of cannabis should be stricken from the Criminal Code; 67 per
cent think possession of small amounts should not carry jail sentences.

And when the federal standing committee on health reviewed the
Controlled Drugs and Substances Act last year, the Internet was not even
discussed. Reform Party Health Critic Grant Hill, a member of the
committee, says any attempt to censor the Internet would not only be
unfair, it would fail miserably. He says the only way to combat
information that might be bad for youth is to offset it with more
information. "You can't hide your head in the sand," he said. "You have
to get information out there in the same format, make it fun, exciting
and interesting."

And police agencies don't seem to be particularly concerned about the
Internet. The RCMP has been monitoring the Internet from its Ottawa
branch for the past 1 years, but local offices don't appear to be all
that diligent. "It's certainly a new area for us," said Inspector Reg
Bonvie in Milton, Ont. "We're monitoring it as best we can, but it's
timeconsuming."

Sergeant Terry Blaise of the Ontario Provincial Police said he isn't
aware of any Internet monitoring program. "This is the first time the
subject's ever come up," he said two weeks ago.

Blaise concedes that the vast Internet could turn out to be a setback in
the war against drugs if the online sale of drugs continues to grow.
"In terms of intelligence gathering, the Internet is massive," Blaise
said. "No police service in the world would have sufficient personnel to
monitor it on a fulltime basis."

Bruce Roswell, the director of Health Canada's bureau of drug
surveillance, which reports illicit activity to the police, said he has
investigated Web sites based in Mexico and Europe advertising illegal
drugs for sale. He added that the bureau can make a move only in the
case of a Web site that originates in Canada.

"Society and parents have a legitimate concern that young people might
have some motivation to try out drugs because it looks cool," said David
Jones, a founder of Electronic Frontier Canada, a civil liberties group
for the information highway. But that's no different than the images
portrayed in television, Hollywood movies, or novels, he said. Like all
authors, he added, Web masters and writers have artistic licence.

For parents who do worry about their child's exposure to the seductive
gurgle of bongs on the Internet, Jones and many others say the best
antidote is to overdose them with responsible information.