Are You Tired of the Pot Wink?

Nearly all of my friends smoke pot once in a while.

I never do, of course, because my mother reads this blog.

But I've certainly been around it plenty of times. Wink, wink.

Justin Trudeau may be playing a dangerous game, coming out as someone who has not only been around marijuana, but actually took a drag or two off a joint. More than once. He inhaled. I think what he and his advisors are betting on, is that a lot of us are tired of the hypocrisy that surrounds this drug.

Yes, my police officer friends, I am fully aware that pot is illegal. That's why my friends who indulge keep their stash and their accoutrements hidden away in rafters or back closets. And yes, there are big scary men connected to trafficking who booby trap lovely farmers' fields and yaddda yadda yadda.

Here's what I also know: if I wanted to get high this afternoon, this pie-baking, church-going, mortgage-paying, middle-aged lady could have my hands on some marijuana in, oh, about five minutes. So, clearly, what we're doing now regarding the criminals etc., isn't really working.

Trudeau knows this, and he knows that you and I know it. He also knows that most people in this country have, at some point, smoked some pot and they didn't become wild addicts or go on killing sprees or whatever thing is being said now to dissuade the kids from trying it. They giggled. They ate a lot of chips. They slept well, and that's about it. Nearly all of us would rather be around someone quite high than someone quite drunk. The high guy doesn't get belligerent, or make a pass at your sweetheart. They giggle, make no sense for a while and then they go to bed.

Furthermore, when we encounter someone who says they've never, ever smoked pot, we expect we're being lied to. Well, we're being lied to or we're talking with someone really boring or backward, or maybe a religious nut who's about to give us a lecture on abortion and evolution. We wonder how they ended up at the same party as us.

It's the sentiment about the boring and backward that Trudeau is trying to tap into, since I suspect he knows he's never going to appeal to the anti-abortion, questioning-of-evolution crowd.

Trudeau is looking for votes from people like me, people who are tired of what we see as the boatloads of bullshit that have surrounded conversations about pot all our lives. We're also people who don't quite trust anyone so dull, so incurious, so non-rebellious or so ideological as to never to have touched the stuff.

Will the strategy work? I guess we'll find out in about two years.