A Bicycle Adventure

A while ago, a friend and I decided that this summer we should take a week and see Nova Scotia, or atleast as much of it as we can, by bike. I've never done a trip such as this, and neither has he, so the prospects seem to be against us. Planning, or at least pondering of what we might like to do, fell by the wayside for the past few months, but I've recently decided to focus on it again. I think that, at worst, it will be something to look forward to as I work my way through the hell that will be my March.

All this is to say, here is a place that I think that I would like to visit. The whole of the southern tip of the Province is really gorgeous, and also suffered tremendous economic distress in the early 90's because of the collapse of the fishery. I'm not sure what its like now, but its not like employment prospects beyond call centres have been very common in the province since then.

waydowntown

Waydowntown is on tonight; I forgot how fucked up and detached this movie is, and I think that I understand it better now that i am a couple of years older.

It was really cool in first year, unable to even conceive of office life, now that I have a degree, and within a year and a half (with luck) will have another, the prospects of listless white-collar work seems all to real.

LCBO to hold strike vote?

The LCBO held a strike vote. Thats not cool.

For What?

Today, as most have you have probably read, 4 RCMP officers were shot and killed in Alberta at the site of a marijuana grow-op. Obviously, this is tremendously sad for both the families of those that were killed, the community, and the police force at large.

But I think that what disturbs me most about all this is that in a very real sense, the deaths were senseless. I mean, all murder's really are, and these were people that were effectively guarding, not storming, the facility. But I like looking at root causes, and like asking big questions, and I think that this requires that we should: the only reason that these people were killed today is because Canada maintains a prohibition on marijuana and forces its sale and distribution to criminal elements. Let's face it: lots of people smoke pot, and that the current laws against are notable only for how spectacularly they fail. This is why the government is looking to decriminalize possession, this is the same sort of thing that killed the prohibition of alcohol in the eariler part of the 20th century.

So there is going to be lot's of talk about drugs and the drug trade in Canada over the next couple of days. I'm going to make the extremely bold assertion that it will largely call for tougher penalties for those that deal in the trade. I actually don't mind punishing those invovled in organized crime (because that is who we are dealing with) harshly, but I also know that this hardly is stopping the people that make the big bucks. Wouldn't it be that much better if we didn't have to worry about pot grow-ops in the middle of no where? Wouldn't it be better if we could have firmer controls on how a product that is used by an indordinate amount of youg people is produced? Wouldn't it be better if the government could generate revenue on the sale of it all? The ban achieves none of this, and encourages real criminal endeavours like we have seen today.