17 October is a very big day in Canada – it is the day when recreational marijuana becomes legalised throughout the whole of Canada.  In other words, as long as you are of a certain age you can go into a shop and buy it and it is not a crime.  Until now, it had medical marijuana, which is slightly different, although pretty much the same thing.  I say slightly different, because obviously you need a doctor’s script to get it, but doctors tend to give out medical scripts, as many staff know, for all sorts of things and marijuana is diagnosed for anything from depression, anxiety, back pain, headaches, nausea, etc, etc, so if one really wants it, it would be very easy to get a script.  Now you will not even have to do that. 

Another sign of how dramatically the world is changing is that Utah is the State where the vast majority of Mormons live and their religion does not even allow them to have caffeine, let alone alcohol.  They have however agreed with the government that they will reduce their opposition to marijuana on the basis that only medical marijuana is allowed in Utah.  The fact though that such a religious group, who don’t even believe that caffeine is healthy and are strictly against any work on a Sunday, can now agree to medical marijuana being legalised is still a shock to the system.

I remember many arguments with my mother when I was young that one day marijuana would be legalised and she always told me I was “nuts”.  My reasoning was always very simple – I never understood why cigarettes, which kill so many people, can be legal and alcohol, which causes so many accidents, so much domestic violence as well as leads to many murders, could be legal, but marijuana could not be.  That does not mean I think marijuana is a good thing, but it is just very hard for me to accept that marijuana or dagga as one calls it in South Africa, is any worse than cigarettes in particular in terms of the damage to your health.  People who smoke cigarettes will of course jump up and down, saying marijuana is a gateway drug, although they are the last people who should – when they die of the various cancers in State hospitals, we are having to subsidise their choice in terms of the taxes we pay for the healthcare they get.  There never has been any scientific link between somebody smoking marijuana and then becoming a heroin addict, so the whole “gateway drug” story is a load of nonsense that is just not backed up by any science.  Of course, some people who first smoke marijuana will go on to other drugs, but so are some people who go to High School who will end up taking drugs and that does not mean we should stop going to High School.  Some people who smoke cigarettes are also ultimately going to take heroin, but does that now mean there is a link between cigarettes and heroine?