Barbara Kay, Is the Marijuana Party trying to legalize pot - or convince Canadians..

[medpot]

National Post


Barbara Kay, Is the Marijuana Party trying to legalize pot - or convince Canadians pot makes you boorish, ignorant and anti-Semitic?


Posted: October 10, 2008, 4:09 PM by Jonathan Kay
Barbara Kay


It must be fun running as a candidate for the Marijuana Party. You don't have a hope in hell of getting elected, so running for office is more or less a hobby in your off hours from tending to your grow op. Still, you'd think even a bunch of potheads would want to be represented by candidates who put an intelligent - well, okay, that may be asking too much, but at least a civil - face on the idea of legalizing drugs. After all, one of the favourite arguments of anti-legalizers is that the chronic use of marijuana has a deleterious effect on the brain.

Sadly for libertarians, the Marijuana Party candidate in Abbotsford, B.C., Tim Felger, seems not to have been chosen for his brain power, his winning personality or indeed anything except, I guess, the fact that he really really likes smoking pot.

A local critic of Mr Felger, Lee Hanlon, has more than once over the years given Mr Felger a rough ride for his views on any number of issues. Most recently, Mr Hanlon took Mr Felger to task in an e-mail for what Mr Hanlon calls "purposefully false and misleading statements [Felger] made)" [at an all-candidate's meeting at the University of the Fraser Valley] concerning the war on terror. Mr Felger's allusion to our allies, including Israel, as the "real terrorists" was offensive to Mr Hanlon and he said so to Mr Felger in an e-mail. Mr Felger replied:

"I told you, you are a fucking nazi.
Even if you are a jew, Isreal is in the wrong and should be erased as a country.
You don't steal and kill the palenstines and call your self rightous.
Again, *** you and stop writing.
I am not interested in your bullshit.
You are a moran and don't write me again."

(Isn't pot supposed to make you like all mellow and "whatever"?)

When Mr Hanlon took his indignation at this feedback to Marijuana Party "headquarters," he was informed by a representative that “even if” it were possible to remove him as a candidate, the party would not do so, as they “consider Tim Felger to be one of the moderate members in our party.” Oh dear. If Mr Felger is a moderate, I hardly dare imagine what one of their more militant candidates would have to say when critiqued by a constituent.

Now I personally am in no hurry to legalize marijuana, so in a way, the fact that the Marijuana Party is supporting a troglodyte like Mr Felger works to my advantage. But if he is the very best they can come up with as the political voice for their "issue," potheads hoping the Marijuana Party will advance the cause of legalization all over Canada should be concerned. Indeed, Tim Felger would seem to be the I-told-you-so poster boy for the status quo.