George Bernard Shaw is credited with the quote, \u201cA dramatic critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.\u201d (For those with \u201cWTF\u201d knitted into their eyebrows, this is a play on the phrase, \u201cleave no stone unturned\u201d meaning to conduct a thorough search.)<\/p>\n
GBS was merely pointing out that drama critics considered it their duty to figuratively stone to death everything they reviewed. Back in his day, \u201cstoned\u201d only had the one meaning\u2014the 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.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a hippie joke. (background info required; a tern is a kind of seabird).<\/p>\n
Q: Why did the hippie leave cannabis on the beach?<\/p>\n
A: He wanted to leave no tern unstoned.<\/p>\n
And now that I\u2019ve used the \u201cc\u201d word, we can proceed with this week\u2019s topic.<\/p>\n
On October 17th<\/sup>, 2018, cannabis was legalized in Canada. While it doesn\u2019t come close to the controversy of the Trump presidency or Brexit, opinion is divided in Canada on the subject.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Plus, we\u2019re now all mellowed out, man.<\/p>\n Actually, I can\u2019t substantiate that last statement; the likelihood is low, and having never indulged in my life, even if every other Canadian in the country is \u201cmellowed out\u201d, I\u2019m not. (In fact, I\u2019m never mellow: morose, moronic, even maddening, but never mellow.)<\/p>\n But I digress.<\/p>\n With legalization comes the opportunity for big corporations to cash in. This means that pot will no longer be a cottage industry; it\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n The birds and the bees will be mellow too, and in the case of the birds at least, mellifluous.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a thought\u2014if honey\u2019s taste is affected by the flowers that bees visit (e.g., alfalfa, clover, etc.) I wonder what cannabis honey would taste like?<\/p>\n But the big question that\u2019s been dogging me these past few days is, how is cannabis harvested\u2014especially outdoors\u2014on an industrial scale? My online research yielded precious little information, so I was forced to use my imagination.<\/p>\n My first theory was \u201ccombine harvesters\u201d.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n Amusing though the image may be, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n My next theory\u2014and vision\u2014was 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\u2019t, 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.<\/p>\n Turns out this might be nearer the truth. But I\u2019ll leave you to do your own research to find out how near.<\/p>\n The thing is\u2026 a handful of tea leaves isn\u2019t worth as much as a handful of cannabis buds, so the temptation for workers to \u201ctake their work home\u201d must be significant.<\/p>\n Aside: \u201cTea leaf\u201d is cockney rhyming slang for \u201cthief\u201d.<\/p>\n When a person starts thinking about the practicalities of the cannabis supply chain, he realizes that the nightmare scenario of \u201ca nation stoned\u201d could really happen. Just think\u2014the big corporates industrialize production, the price plummets, wholesalers and retailers start hurting, and a \u201csurvival of the strongest\u201d period ensues. Those left standing will have a larger market share, but they\u2019ll still need to make enough money to make it worth their while. This means increasing their sales volumes. (Bear with me\u2014this 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\u2019ll drop out of school en masse<\/em>, and twenty years later we\u2019ll 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\u2019s kind of ironic, given that those same starving potheads will all have the munchies.<\/p>\n But then I\u2019m 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<\/sup> and early 19th<\/sup> centuries. While alcohol abuse continues to be the root of problems, heartache, pain and even death, society hasn\u2019t actually broken down. So, I suppose Canadians will learn to live with one more dumb way to die.<\/p>\n A long time ago, I heard what was supposed to be an old Arab blessing: \u201cMay you never sleep downwind of your camel.\u201d I\u2019ll leave you with a new Canadian blessing: \u201cMay you never sleep downwind of your toking neighbour.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" George Bernard Shaw is credited with the quote, \u201cA dramatic critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.\u201d (For those with \u201cWTF\u201d knitted into their eyebrows, this is a play on the phrase, \u201cleave no stone unturned\u201d meaning to conduct a thorough search.) GBS was merely pointing out that drama critics considered it their duty to figuratively stone to death… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[490],"tags":[624,623],"class_list":["post-1377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-commentaries","tag-canada","tag-cannabis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1377"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}