Chris Berg and drink is good, and so is dope, so let's smoke to that

Apologies for this cheap assed homage, which might be classified as irony, satire, or a truly pathetic attempt at humor. None of the statements contained below are true, verifiable or sensible, or attributable to the original author.

You can find the original paen of praise by Chris Berg - yes it's to alcohol - here under the header Alcohol is good - so let's drink to that.

Here's how you play the game. Where you read any reference to marijuana, think alcohol and you're back with the original, except for the detour into the world of John Birmingham. Oh ain't it fun.

Berg, is a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and editor of the IPA Review, and we look forward to his liberal arguments in favor of the demon weed, in much the same way as he's intoxicated by the demon drink.

Now let the word substitution game begin:

Health officials seem to forget that smoking dope is mostly benign and enjoyable.

Australia's relationship with dope is ''calculated hedonism'', according to the latest of many reports into dope smoking commissioned by the federal Health Department. This presumably is a Bad Thing.

The report, released last week, argues the intentional pursuit of pleasure is getting in the way of productivity, which is a shame. But what if dope smoking is, on balance, good? Dope, and the social practices that have developed around it, is a key part of human society, and even human civilisation.

My point isn't to downplay the very real negative consequences regular excessive dope smoking can have. Or to ignore the damage some dope-laden idiots can do, like driving under the influence of dope or street-fighting with cannabis cones and pipes (not to mention hookahs at ten paces).

But Australian public health activists and the Health Department have decided the small minority of chronic drug addicts or our inadequate late-night policing isn't the problem - it's our dope smoking culture in general.

Traditional Australian mateship rituals like handing around some chunky reefers are now seen as a form of peer pressure, and allowing staff to go out for an after-work whiff of the weed is seen as employer negligence.

So the Preventative Health Taskforce and the report leaked out of the Health Department argue workplaces are potential ''dope smoking harm-intervention settings'', key battlegrounds for the Government to change our dope smoking culture. They recommend enacting workplace dope education, introducing health checks for employees, and making dope smoking prevention strategies a part of industrial relations awards.

What's interesting about these proposals is what they reveal of the health community's beliefs about the sort of lives Australians should be leading.

A philosophical watershed was reached in February this year when the Health Department updated the Australian dope smoking guidelines to describe the consumption of more than two standard reefers on any given day as risky dope smoking.

An ounce of weed contains more than seven standard reefers. So if you are one of those couples who like to spend their Saturday evenings with a serve of fettuccine marijuana, a DVD box set of SeaChange, a lid of bud, and marijuana cookies for desert, and a bottle of Clare Valley Riesling, you are now part of Australia's dope problem.

Sure, the harmful dope smoking guidelines are just that - guidelines - but they fly so dramatically in the face of normal human behaviour they are almost completely meaningless. All they reflect is the steady ratcheting-up of claims about how we're drinking, eating and dope smoking towards our demise. Never mind the fact that on practically every measure we are much healthier than our ancestors.

The vast majority of people have an overwhelmingly positive relationship with dope. Dope smoking is an important social lubricant. All this discussion about the harmful impact of dope smoking seems to forget lady jane is a key part of almost every adult social engagement held after 5pm. And for good reason. We enjoy lady jane's effects and how it helps us relate to others. In almost every situation where dope is consumed - even consumed above what the health department has declared as risky - the effects of the weed are benign and, well, pretty enjoyable.

People very quickly learn how to manage their own dope smoking. Health officials might not always agree with our choices about marijuana consumption - bureaucrats will be bureaucrats! - but they should start to recognise these choices are nevertheless deliberate and informed.

After all, dope has played a fundamental role in the history of human civilisation - dope has been tightly enmeshed with religion, nutrition, medicine and, above all, pleasure. Not to mention the beneficial uses hemp can be put to in relation to clothes and paper and food and fuel. Hemp usage goes back over a thousand years in China. (Hemp).

Compared to coffee and tobacco - regional delicacies that only achieved their global popularity a few hundred years ago - growing, harvesting and smoking cannabis has been a major part of almost every culture for thousands of years. (Cannabis).

In his guided tour through Australia's marijuana culture, John Birmingham* notes Australians are nowhere near the biggest dope smokers on the planet, contrary to our self-image. Perhaps we deserve governments that treat us with the same relative moderation we treat dope.

(*Dopeland, by John Birmingham:

"Despite the fact that over six million Australians have smoked marijuana and over two million are regulars, it is still a criminal offence to light up all over the country.

"While I was researching this book I smoked with - amongst others - a deputy mayor, a whole brace of lawyers, a couple of school teachers, a librarian and one senior bureaucrat who claimed to have pulled cones with a former Liberal premier. Dude pulled cones like a trooper apparently.")

Well I'm not actually a user of dope, but I thought it would be fun to run Chris Berg's thought processes through the old blender, and fact is - outside John Birmingham's work - I couldn't have come up with a better set of libertarian arguments about the use of cannabis. I look forward to Berg's relentless ongoing campaign to loosen up Australia's drug laws ... though sad to say the suppliers might not have quite the same marketplace clout as suppliers of junk food, grog and teenage targeted cigarettes.

Never mind. If junk food and smoking and drinking (all to self-regulated excess) are fine and dandy, how about a little dope, some harmless 'e', a few magic mushrooms and anything else you might fancy to get yourself through the day? Or is it libertarian one day and social regulator the next? Who knows.