blogging it real

It seems the 2006 Qantas Media Awards are over before they began.

This article is simply magic - just when you thought it was safe to toke again, the heavy-hitting Gisborne Herald comes out with this sensational piece of journalism:

It was nothing for young people to use eight to 20 "tinnies" of cannabis — about 16 to 40 joints — per week, Mr Johnstone said. Cannabis was freely available to youngsters who often started smoking at about age 11, he said.
Cannabis had long-term effects on the body and once a level of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) had been established in the brain, it could remain as a stockpile for up to six or eight weeks — even if the user reduced a habit to one joint per week, he said.
"The greatest shame is the lethargy issue . . . the bright young boy or girl suddenly becomes the young person who loses all motivation and doesn’t feel like doing anything . . . and the negative effect on social behaviour, including caring about the difference between right and wrong," Mr Johnstone said.
Cannabis was more likely the reason for violent crime than P, yet people refused to believe it, he said.
"It is easier for people to believe that P is the reason for crime nowadays, much as they did about barbiturates and other drugs in the 1980s. But back then cannabis was there, in large quantities and with greater regularity. And sadly, it’s still there."
He pointed to the case of the Bell RSA murders that were reported to follow not only P bingeing, but regular heavy cannabis use.

You might be laughing now, but I too used to naively assume grass just made me giggle.

The reporter covers off the the risk this Reefer Madness poses to children too, not just any old children but "the small children", and even manages to go one better:

He referred to a street incident around the time of Guy Fawkes night, involving more than a dozen parents stoned and openly smoking cannabis. Those people completely ignored the dangers to their small children and animals. Neighbourly interference was met with abuse, Mr Johnstone said.

Both stoned and openly smoking cannabis - you make me sick.

This part's the best though:

An often-unspoken tragedy that had accompanied the widespread use and seeming acceptance of cannabis had been the parallel increase in grossly-irresponsible sexual abuse — including that of young children and elderly women, he said.

Surely this is enough proof for ya'll bloggers to stop laying into our moral guardians Peter Dunnehill and Jim Anderton.

Afterall the US government informed its people in a PR campaign in 1936 that:

"One puff and your sons will become stark-raving mad murderers and rapists. Your daughters will become tramps instantly."

You've been warned.