Hey, do you smell something?
It smells a bit like skunk, and Cheezies, and victory! Yes, it is officially Weedmas Day, the day that cannabis becomes legal in Canada. Open up your window and get a whiff of this new world we’ve entered. And maybe check on that guy sitting on the bench across the street – he’s spent the last two hours talking to a fence.
Today Canada became the second country in the world to legalize recreational marijuana. It’s kind of fascinating how we got here.
Proving that we have always been ahead of the curve, Canada was one of the first countries to ban marijuana back in the early 1920s at a time when it was a seldom-used and little-known drug. Some give credit to author and Maclean’s columnist Emily Murphy, who often wrote under the name “Janey Canuck,” for popularizing and promoting the pot panic that would lead to the drug’s prohibition. (How disappointing is it that this is the legacy of such a great pen name? Doesn’t it seem like 1920s Janey Canuck should have been writing about how to brew rye whisky in your bathtub or fend off cougars with a canoe paddle?)
Despite the dire warnings from buzzkill Janey, as well as some harsh consequences for getting busted by the police for marijuana offences, use of the drug began to flourish in the 1960s and hasn’t slowed down since. A couple of decades later came the American-led “war on drugs,” about as winnable as my “war on my children waking me up a 6:30 a.m. every damn day.”
As I grew up in the 1980s and ’90s, the war was mostly a distant one in my small Alberta town, but on rare occasions I could smell that distinct scent wafting from a basement and knew that someone was doing something “bad.”
As I got older I was taken aback to learn that people I knew were starting to do this “bad” thing, sneaking away at parties and coming back smelling like the badness. What was wrong with those bad people, we thought? Why weren’t they content to stay out in the open and chug beers and whisky like the rest of us law-abiding teenagers?
As I got slightly older I realized that people who smoked marijuana didn’t actually seem all that bad. In fact, I remember a lot of bad, violent things happening from the folks who were fueled by whisky and beer. Not so much from the green team.
And then there was the night I was in the back seat of a Pontiac Sunfire and my friend’s older sister’s friend took out a pipe. He took a few puffs, and passed it around the car. Nothing really bad happened until it came to me. Wanting to play it cool, I grabbed it and tried to light the thing but was holding the lighter the wrong way and instead of setting the little plant bits on fire I burned a blister into my thumb. Cool, man. Cool.
Important and completely truthy interjection: In case any U.S. Border Agents are reading this, I HAVE NEVER SMOKED MARIJUANA or ingested pot brownies or watched a Cheech and Chong movie or purchased a hemp necklace or listened to the music of Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus or eaten at White Castle or microwaved a frozen pizza at two in the morning. My old roommate The Toddfather will totally vouch for me. Please please please let me cross the border so I can see the Blue Jays play in Seattle, OK?!
Anyway, here we are. Marijuana is legal. Legalization was totally the right thing to do, and yet still feels very strange. In this new age of weed freedom, I think the smell will be the strangest thing.
Well, for some people the strangest thing might be that pile of leaves over there. Like, have you ever really looked at a leaf? Like, really looked at it, man? What even is a leaf? And what do you call more than one leaf? Leaveseseses?
Maybe it’s just that I have young children. I have no concerns that they’re going to smoke weed, go insane and then murder me in my sleep. Like they’d ever let me sleep.
No, it’s the smoke. My kids have been conditioned by their mother, and rightly so, to recoil at the scent of cigarette smoke. You will no doubt get the stink eye if you come anywhere near them with a cigarette. Last week my older son complained that “the air was bad” at a soccer practice because some young punks were vaping on the basketball court on the other side of the field.
Canadian society has done a pretty good job of eliminating second-hand smoke from public spheres, but now there’s a new law that might make it slightly cool again for people to feel free to share whatever they’re puffing on with whoever is sitting nearby.
I’m old enough to remember when people were allowed to smoke in bars. It was gross – everyone came home smelling like a bowl of cancer. We can’t go back to that.
Anyway, go have your fun, everyone. You’ve earned it. And your uncle probably shouldn’t even be in jail right now.
Just be mindful of the smoke when my kids are on the soccer field. Their stink eye is strong, and they kick really hard.
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. He can be reached via email at aprest@nsnews.com.
