(~5 minutes to read)
George Bernard Shaw is credited with the quote, “A dramatic critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.” (For those with “WTF” knitted into their eyebrows, this is a play on the phrase, “leave no stone unturned” meaning to conduct a thorough search.)
GBS was merely pointing out that drama critics considered it their duty to figuratively stone to death everything they reviewed. Back in his day, “stoned” only had the one meaning—the literal one of stoning a person (to death). These days, its more common use is in describing a person who has enthusiastically indulged in recreational pharmaceuticals, especially cannabis, and is now under its influence.
Here’s a hippie joke. (background info required; a tern is a kind of seabird).
Q: Why did the hippie leave cannabis on the beach?
A: He wanted to leave no tern unstoned.
And now that I’ve used the “c” word, we can proceed with this week’s topic.
On October 17th, 2018, cannabis was legalized in Canada. While it doesn’t come close to the controversy of the Trump presidency or Brexit, opinion is divided in Canada on the subject.
But remember that we Canadians are a lot less excitable than some of our global neighbours, so our muted disagreement is probably as pronounced, relatively-speaking, as that of Leavers and Remainers in the UK.
Plus, we’re now all mellowed out, man.
Actually, I can’t substantiate that last statement; the likelihood is low, and having never indulged in my life, even if every other Canadian in the country is “mellowed out”, I’m not. (In fact, I’m never mellow: morose, moronic, even maddening, but never mellow.)
But I digress.
With legalization comes the opportunity for big corporations to cash in. This means that pot will no longer be a cottage industry; it’ll become an Industry. In cooler climes, tomato and cucumber greenhouses will be re-purposed, while in warmer places, vast swathes of countryside will be converted from corn to cannabis. Ten-foot-high razor wire fencing will replace the more diminutive barbed variety normally found around fields, and doubtless, scarecrows will be replaced by mercenary snipers.
The birds and the bees will be mellow too, and in the case of the birds at least, mellifluous.
Here’s a thought—if honey’s taste is affected by the flowers that bees visit (e.g., alfalfa, clover, etc.) I wonder what cannabis honey would taste like?
But the big question that’s been dogging me these past few days is, how is cannabis harvested—especially outdoors—on an industrial scale? My online research yielded precious little information, so I was forced to use my imagination.
My first theory was “combine harvesters”.
I have this childhood memory of watching an advert for flour or bread or something. In it, a farmer stands near a combine and bites down on an ear of wheat; he smiles and nods his approval, and we cut to a shot of the combine cutting a swathe through the wheat fields.
It seems logical then that my imagination conjured up an aging hippie biting down on a cannabis bud, grinning stupidly and falling over, revealing a combine harvester cutting and threshing its way randomly round a field. (Seconds later, the cops arrive and arrest the combine operator for DUI.)
Amusing though the image may be, it’s currently not possible to harvest cannabis the same way as wheat or lentils. Apparently, only the buds are harvested, and they have to be separated from the rest of the plant carefully.
My next theory—and vision—was also inspired by a childhood memory. That was of images of dusky maidens in fifty shades of grey clothing (they were all black and white photos back then) picking leaves from tea bushes and placing them in large baskets strapped to their backs. (How do I know they were maidens? I don’t, but that was the kind of flowery language used on the educational films shown at my school.) Given that cannabis harvesting requires the human touch, it seems logical that this is the way it will be done, both indoors and out.
Turns out this might be nearer the truth. But I’ll leave you to do your own research to find out how near.
The thing is… a handful of tea leaves isn’t worth as much as a handful of cannabis buds, so the temptation for workers to “take their work home” must be significant.
Aside: “Tea leaf” is cockney rhyming slang for “thief”.
When a person starts thinking about the practicalities of the cannabis supply chain, he realizes that the nightmare scenario of “a nation stoned” could really happen. Just think—the big corporates industrialize production, the price plummets, wholesalers and retailers start hurting, and a “survival of the strongest” period ensues. Those left standing will have a larger market share, but they’ll still need to make enough money to make it worth their while. This means increasing their sales volumes. (Bear with me—this is a humour column, remember!) Skunk will go on special, all the kids with their fake IDs will scoop it up, go stupid with it and fry their brains. They’ll drop out of school en masse, and twenty years later we’ll have no one capable of teaching or doctoring or nursing or programming. Society will break down and anarchy will set in; and because all the food producers moved into pot production thirty years previously, the world will starve. That’s kind of ironic, given that those same starving potheads will all have the munchies.
But then I’m sure that the temperance societies of the past envisioned an alcoholic Armageddon as they formed to fight the proliferation of inebriation in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. While alcohol abuse continues to be the root of problems, heartache, pain and even death, society hasn’t actually broken down. So, I suppose Canadians will learn to live with one more dumb way to die.
A long time ago, I heard what was supposed to be an old Arab blessing: “May you never sleep downwind of your camel.” I’ll leave you with a new Canadian blessing: “May you never sleep downwind of your toking neighbour.”