and things went downhill from there

I know I mentioned it elsewhere, but I'm not sure if I touched on it here.

When atara and I made a recent trip down to Fargo, we passed a couple of signs erected by the Government of Canada near the border warning us that Cannabis is not legal in the US, and that we should not attempt to take it into the US. Obviously we wouldn't, and didn't, but the border guards never even broached the subject. It seems that our own government is more concerned about people taking it over the border than the US Customs agents were. On the return trip, the Canadian Customs agents specifically asked if we were trying to bring any Cannabis products into Canada.

I guess they had to ask because North Dakota is such a hotbed of marijuana activity. I truthfully told them no, but I had to bite my tongue to avoid asking, "Why would we drive down south to buy it when I can just drive a few blocks from home and pick from a menu of pot products in a local store?" It was all a bit odd.

I am curious about how long marijuana will have to be legal up here before it starts to lose some of the strange stigma attached to it. CBC had a piece about it the other day, where they were asking people in the street about their thoughts on pot now that we are six months into it being legal up here. People were pretty much fine with it, mostly citing the fact that in spite of the dire warnings from the nay-sayers, society had not fallen apart - indeed, life seems to be going on with no visible changes.

One of the people they spoke to was a woman with whom I found myself nodding in agreement as she went into a bit of a rant. She wanted to know why there was such a social stigma attached to marijuana as opposed to alcohol. She pointed out that there is a sizeable list of societal ills associated with alcohol, yet at our city's recent street parties in support of the local hockey team they were openly selling and consuming alcohol, but warning people that consuming pot in a public place was still prohibited. She said that pot has far fewer social issues and ills associated with it than alcohol, yet we still try to hide it away and shame it like it's a bad thing while openly embracing the latter.

I couldn't agree more. All one needs to to is sift through news headlines and look for the keyword "alcohol" to get story after story involving violence, murder, and death. Then sift through for stories that involve pot, and the stories will mostly involve people getting stoned and calling 911 for pizza, or temporarily forgetting where they live. Marijuana tends to invoke the opposite of violence.

The laws governing both up here are markedly different. While the laws governing alcohol are moderately strict in some respects, they are still pretty loose when it comes to things like availability and public consumption. New products can appear in liquor stores without the government wanting to be able to control every stop of the process, right back regulating the conditions for growing the grain and hops. On the other hand, while marijuana is technically legal now, the laws governing it are almost stifling, from the production and sale of it to where and how it can be consumed.

I like to think that this is a transitional stage, and that the laws will be modernized a bit once people start to realize it's not going to corrupt our youth or destroy our society. It might take a generation, but I think we'll get there.