Tag: social comment

You’re Only as Stupid as the Warning Label Says You Are

Recently, while waiting for the cable guy to hook up my new HDTV, I took a moment to quit doing the man/guy thing of feigning interest in all things electronic and passed the time reading the Manufacturer’s Warnings.  It was an interesting read.  It cautioned me against doing all manner of dumb stuff to my new TV, like hitting the screen with a sharp object or operating the unit underwater.  While I can imagine going Elvis on a bad hockey result, I don’t know why anybody would want to watch the news in the pool.  How silly!

Of course, stupid product warnings have been around since the mid 1970s, when corporations started telling people their coffee was hot and not to drink the Drano.  They have accelerated since then to the point where just about anything you buy, these days, comes with a checklist of “thou shalt nots” longer than the Ten Commandants.  For example (and these are just a few simple ones)
“For external use only” – on a hair curling iron
“Caution: Do not spray in eyes” – on deodorant
“Do not use orally” – on a toilet bowl cleaning brush
“Choking Hazard: This toy is a small ball” – written in two languages on a
small ball
And there are a lot more out there that get a lot more complicated.

There is a collective idea that we have these stupid warnings because our society is under siege from bloodsucking lawyers who will do anything to initiate lawsuits.  This is not true.  Yes, our society is under siege from bloodsucking lawyers (this, by the way, is a general comment, not directed at any particular bloodsucking lawyer.)  However, we have stupid warnings on products because people are stupid.  I’m not talking about high profile Darwin Award stupidity; just everyday ordinary incredible acts of Dumb and Dumber.  You know for a fact that there’s some fool out there who will give the aforementioned small ball to a two year old and wonder how in the hell he got it in his mouth.  And this is not unusual behaviour.  People on bicycles, weave in and out of traffic, wearing nothing more than shorts, an iPod and a helmet, as if the helmet were a shield of invulnerability.  I’ve seen a guy staple up outdoor electric lights while they are plugged in.  People who are driving, race red lights while eating pizza, attach Ikea furniture to their roofs with twine and I’m not even going to mention texting the spouse to see what to pick up for dinner.

Get them out of their cars and they don’t get any smarter.  Recently, a family was doing some spring gardening, using a device called the Weed Wand.  The Weed Wand is an advertised alternative to the chemical warfare we’ve been using (and most cities have been banning, thank God) to control weeds.  What it is, is a snout attached to a handheld propane tank that shoots flames directly at the weeds and kills them by cremation.  (I’m not making this up; this is a real product.)  Guess what?  They set the house on fire!  These are ordinary people, but their actions do beg the question: who buys a flamethrower — even a small one — to tidy up the driveway?  When asked about it, the guy said, “In my opinion, it’s not a safe product, and we certainly weren’t using it in a reckless fashion…. I don’t think products like that should be on the market.”  You can read all about it here but my point is – it’s a flamethrower!

The problem is our society is basically benevolent.  We have eliminated most of the dangerous elements in our world and control as many of the hazardous ones as possible.  However, in our zeal to make a risk-free society, we’ve created a couple of generations of people who think this is the natural order of things.  They believe the world is a safe place.  They wander around as if nothing on this good green earth is ever going to hurt them.  Then, when something does, they think there’s been a malfunction somewhere.  I’ll grant you that they might not be as stupid as I think they are but they sure act like it.

The reason corporations put all those idiot warnings on their products is — sure as hell — somebody somewhere is going to find a way to poke themselves in the eye, lob off a finger or operate the unit underwater and electrocute themselves.  Then they’ll scream bloody murder that the manufacturer didn’t warn them about the dangers and run for the lawyers.  Sometimes, I wonder if our well regulated society has beaten the self preservation gene out of our species.  I’m not saying we should return to the days of dog-eat-dog/devil take the hindmost, but every once in a while, just a touch of common sense wouldn’t hurt.

How We Lost the War on Drugs

According to the Global Commission on Drug Policy, after fighting for nearly fifty years, we’ve lost the war on drugs.  I don’t know what the terms of surrender are, but I imagine they’re going to be written on some really cool paper with unicorns and rainbows in the margins.  Actually, I didn’t realize the war was still going on.  I thought we’d won when Bill Clinton refused to inhale.  Goes to show ya, I’m old enough to be out of the loop when it comes to the recreational use of anything.

The major question is how did we lose?  After all, serious substance abuse isn’t all that pretty to watch.  I had a friend who literally turned green after six months on a steady diet of coke, diet coke and not much else.  What started out as a weekend binge ended up as a determined lifestyle.  My buddy went from a grade A student nerd, interested in the new world of binary mathematics, to an after midnight zombie, feeding on late night infomercials and horror movies.  I don’t know what finally happened to him, but the last time I saw him, he did that weird, slow fade thing with his head when he looked at me and asked if I could give him some money.  I did, and I’ve felt guilty about it ever since.

There’s no upside to drug abuse, so how did the dealers win and the losers use – oops — the users lose.  The answer is easy.  We did a few things wrong.

First of all, like idiots, we lumped marijuana in with all the nasty bastard stuff.  That made the whole war on drugs just a joke.  Anybody who’s ever had even a casual acquaintance with the grey smoke knows that it’s the most benign of the illegals.  It’s hard to get behind a battle, body and soul, when the enemy was a pretty good friend back in high school and university and still comes around sometimes on the weekend to watch a movie or play some music and chill.  The general public has never been committed to eradicating marijuana use.  Obviously, they don’t want some stoner running the nuclear power plant, but they don’t really care if Tony and Cherie have a toke on Friday night and go dancing — or sit around in the privacy of their own living room and watch Thelma and Louise.  By throwing everything in the same illegal basket we wasted billions of dollars and expended huge resources chasing the wrong criminals.  While guys like Pablo Escobar and Amado Fuentes were running around, playing Robin Hood and soaking North America in cocaine, law enforcement agents were burning grow-ops and busting teenagers.  Ass-backwards, I’ll grant you, but what can you do?

Secondly, mainly because of the idiocy of marijuana prohibition and the powerful lobby that came out of that, we decided, for the most part, drug use was a victimless crime.  In fact, the prevailing wisdom was that it wasn’t actually a crime at all; it was a social problem caused by the usual suspects: poverty and ignorance.  We then recruited an army of social workers and threw the whole mess in their laps.  It wasn’t until much later that we realized the error of our ways.  By that time, it was far too late to restructure the system to deal with the ever-increasing list of victims (who weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.)  And now the myriad of social services we created have a vested interest in maintaining the victimless status quo.  Nobody seems willing to connect the dots between meth, crack and heroin and theft, robbery and prostitution – except, perhaps, law enforcement.  Unfortunately, we forgot to tell those folks what we were up to with the victimless crime thing.  They were under the impression that illegal drug use was a regular crime like all the other ones.  They acted accordingly — complete with those archaic 19th century penalties nobody bothered to update.  In a nutshell, the cops were doing their job without any support from the rest of the social structure.  And as with Prohibition, ninety years ago, they lost public support.

Finally, the biggest reason we lost the war on drugs is we screwed up and made recreational drug use socially acceptable.  Right from the time of Easy Rider and Cheech and Chong, up to and including Harold and Kumar, drug use has been a nudge-nudge, wink-wink activity.  Like the amiable drunk from the 50s (Otis from Andy of Mayberry comes to mind) drug use is considered comic, even funny.   It still carries a whiff of rebellion, but it’s considered relatively harmless.  Even the hardcore drugs carry little or no social stigma.  Should they?  I’m not sure, but the reason we’re winning the war against tobacco is because smoking is no longer socially acceptable.  We don’t arrest people for smoking.  We don’t fine them, jail them or treat them like criminals.  All we do is go “Ewww!” and wave our hands frantically in the air.  The use of tobacco (one of the most addictive and dangerous drugs on the planet) is steadily declining in North America.

Personally, I hope the war on drugs isn’t over.  Perhaps we can’t win, but with a little ingenuity, we can at least battle some of these heavy duty blood suckers to a standstill.  I’d like to see some of the misery they’ve caused ended, some of the neighbourhoods they’ve destroyed restored, and some of the lives they’ve ruined, reclaimed.  Like most people in this country, I don’t care if Tony and Cherie roll a bomber (or whatever they call it these days) now and then — legally or not.  But I would like to see some sanity in our drug laws, some stiff penalties for the dealers we’ve grown fat on addiction and some resolute assistance for those among us who are trapped by it.

The Stanley Cup Finals: A True Fairy Tale

Once upon a time in a great northern kingdom, there was a magical city called Vangroovy.  The people there were totally cool because they lived in the most wonderful city in the whole mystical world.  They had mountains to climb and oceans to sail; tall trees they loved to hug and beautiful weather all year round.  They lived on raw fish and fresh fruit and vegetables.  They drank delicious local wine and spent their weekends smoking medicinal herbs and watching David Suzuki on TV.  Vangroovy would have been paradise, indeed, except for one thing – all the people in the great northern kingdom suffered from a terrible sadness.  Their holiest relic, an ancient Cup given to them by a wise statesman named Stanley, had been stolen.  Years before, a wicked troll named Gary had borrowed the Cup to share with his southern friends, and now he wouldn’t give it back.  Each year, the cities of the great northern kingdom sent their best knights to make war on the armies of the evil troll and retrieve the holy relic, but each year he’d find a way to defeat them.  Many great knights fought in these Winter Wars – Sir Alfredsson, Sir Iginla, Sir Roloson (to name just a few) but all to no avail.  Twice the Knights of Vangroovy had come close to beating the armies of the wicked troll and seizing the holy Cup.  But in the end, the great Roger of Neilson was forced to surrender, and even the mighty Quinn was defeated.  A dark cloud hung heavy over the land.

One day, two young magicians from a faraway place called Ikea, came to Vangroovy.  They were named Hank and Dank.  They said, “We are young now, but as our powers grow, we will use our magic to fight the evil troll.  Who will fight with us?”  Many young knights stepped forward — Sir Salo, from the timeless land of Selanne, Sir Jannik the Dane and Sir Raymond the Swift.  More knights joined them: Sir Lou from the Holy city of Montreal, and three friends from the land of the Moose — Sir Kevin, Sir Alex and Sir Kesler the Grim.

“We are ready to fight,” they said, “but who will lead us?”

One man spoke, “I, Coach V, Alain de Vigneault will lead you.  Follow me!”

For four long years, the war raged.  Each year, the Knights of Vangroovy won many victories, only to be thwarted — again and again — by the wicked troll and his minions, the Red Wings, the Ducks, and the evil Chicago Blackhawks.  But the power of the Knights of Vangroovy was growing and the wicked troll sensed his time had come.  He called on his Centaurs to help him.  Half man, half zebra, these beasts used their awesome power to punish the Knights of Vangroovy and turn the tide of battle against them.  Many brave knights fell in those years: Sir Markus of Naslund, Sir Willie, Mattias of Ohlund and the greatest of them all — Sir Trevor of Linden, who had fought side by side with the Mighty Quinn in the Battle of MSG, in ’94.  But always there were other courageous warriors to take their place: Sir Edler, Sir Ehrhoff, Raffi the Relentless, Hamhuis the Soft Spoken and the valiant Malholtra.  The war continued.

Now the Knights of Vangroovy are within sight of the Cup, once again.  There have been many casualties; the knights are battered and bruised, but they have defeated the evil Blackhawks, the Predators and the Sharks.  With the help of Gillis the Magnificent, they have silenced the Centaurs and hold them at bay.  Now they face their greatest enemy.  The Cup is guarded by the ferocious bear cavalry of Boston, led by a giant and by Timothy of Thomas — a wizard with no bones.  This is the final battle.  There will be no prisoners, no quarter sought or given.  The wounded will remain and fight — or die — where they stand.

“Troll! Hear us!  The Cup is ours, and we’re coming to get it.  Stand and fight.  We will not be denied.  So cry ‘Louuuuu,’ and loose the dogs of war.”