Here is a list of all 14 parts of the video. If you want to hear my presentation, it starts right at the beginning of part 4, and then 5, 6, and 7. People off camera comment throughout, including me, so my nuggets of wisdom can be found throughout the video.

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Here is the text I read from:

I was asked to speak tonight about marijuana and health, and I will talk about that, but it must be in relation to the media, because the media is killing me.

Recently I was contacted by Kent Spencer from The Vancouver Province. He was putting together a big weekend piece about the Mayor of Chilliwack and her McCarthyism squad rooting out the dangers of licensed medical grows.

The first thing I told him was “They aren’t grow-ops. They are medical gardens. A grow-op is something that ruins a home, steals hydro, and has some slave tending the plants.” I explained that using that term for our gardens was derogatory.

The term grow-op was used in the title and all through the article, so I emailed him and asked why. He told me that “grow-op” was the accepted term, one the public was familiar with, and that it wasn’t his position to “change the language”.

Just yesterday, in his examination of the scandals plaguing the current government, a pundit asked the rhetorical question “Do Canadians care?”

No. Canadians don’t care. Not about the scandals, medical marijuana, or prohibition, or anything that needs caring about. And the problem, time and again, is the media. And no, I don’t mean the Big Brother conspiracies that may or may not have validity, I am talking about reporters. People.

Try it some time. Mention marijuana prohibition to a reporter and time and again you get this (amused smirk) face.

They don’t think it is important. So they write their articles in such a way as to convey marijuana as a fringe issue.  Or if you get one of the good reporters – and there are many – and they try to write a sensible piece, their editor chops it up because that tired old fart decides pot is a fringe issue.

They put quotes around the word medical, they use the least-flattering photos they can find, and use many other subtle phrasing and sentence structures to set the general tone of the article. So then the public thinks pot is a fringe issues because they are told it is a fringe issue.

When we try to explain that no, this is an issue that touches literally every person on the planet directly or indirectly, they scoff. Offer to show them the documents supporting our position, they say “Sure, yeah, email that to me.” Then they don’t read them. And on and on and on.

Last year it was the long gun registry. The media yammered endlessly to themselves and to each other about how terribly important or unimportant this issue was or wasn’t. The issue itself: a billion dollars spent over 11 years for a questionable result. It had a huge effect on a very very small number of people. This, apparently, gave it enough importance to be one of the lead stories from cost to coast for the better part of a month.

I tried in vain to point out that just since the LGR was implemented, marijuana prohibition has cost ten times as much and done far more damage. I tried to point out that while they were collectively masturbating over the LGR, Harper changed the laws to make anything involving marijuana a “serious” crime, and that that alone would cost us many times what the LGR costs.

No. This is what Canadians care about. Or rather, this is what the reporters decided Canadians cared about. Nice of them to decide for us what is truly important, isn’t it? This does much to explain why we see more news about Justin Beiber and Charlie Sheen in Canadian papers than we do about, well, anything else in the world.

Last week I read an article about some girl who went into a school and talked at length about how marijuana had made her mentally ill. This girl is maybe 19 or so, and, for whatever reason, couldn’t keep her personal act together, so she blames pot.

Now she is regarded as an expert on the issue, because hey – she was there, man. She knows. They gave her long ink on that one too, because she was doing such a great thing for the kids, there, dontchya know.

Now – do I get to go into schools and tell kids about the benefits of pot, and the dangers of junk food and prohibition? Not on your life. In fact, I am in violation of several provincial laws by simply being on campus with my federally-licensed medicine.

The Rube Nation Press is the new name I have given the Sun Media chain. These partisan hacks make no apologies for scoffing at science and history. They don’t lie, they just have a different interpretation of the facts. In 2011, Objective Truth no longer exists. Everything is now subjective. “Truth” is whatever the believer believes, and the more they believe it, the more true it is. Thus we can never make any inroads with these people. They are like religious fanatics.

Not all, mind you. I have met reporters who were earnest, open, and thoughtful. Kelly Egan from the Citizen was great to us. Many at the CBC have treated us fairly. CJOH TV has been repeatedly kind to our cause. CHCH out of Hamilton has me on for debates fairly often. But in the eight and a half years I have been doing marijuana activism, I have been screwed over more than once, which is why I will hold my tongue no longer.

I spent over an hour on the phone spoon feeding Kent Spencer information, and he wrote what I would only characterize as a prohibitionist-friendly propaganda piece.

When former Ottawa city councillor Gord Hunter sent me a scathing and – I suspect – drunken email full of insults and discriminatory language, I was laughed at. Scathing comments – some of which I would say are actionable – were left on the Sun’s website comments forum, and I was further insulted by Hunter himself. More than once.

If he had laid that kind of vitriol on a person in a wheelchair, an immigrant, a religious believer, or a gay couple, he would very likely have been removed from office. But Larry Obrien didn’t even return my emails.

But the media bias is deep-rooted and I really don’t know how we can get rid of it. We are fair game for ridicule, harassment, stigmatization, and discrimination. Lies are told about our medicine and about us, and cruel, scientifically-inaccurate jokes are made at our expense. When we complain to the authoritative bodies that regulate these clowns, we are met with derision.

I have complained to the press counsel , and their position is anything that is an opinion is okay to print. But these guys write their articles in such a way as to make opinion seem like it is fact, and the Rube Nation absorbs the nonsense as truth.

I have to carry special papers around with me everywhere I go to keep me out of jail because I have a medical condition. Think about that. That is medical segregation. I am officially a second class citizen and I have the papers to prove it. Okay so it isn’t exactly the Warsaw Ghetto or the Gaza strip, but big things like that start out as little things like this.

My blog and website are titled Rage Against The Absurd because absurdity is what I am faced with constantly, so I am forced to constantly rage against it. The testimonies of medical users like myself are constantly met with incredulity, skepticism, ridicule, and suspicion… while cops and government officials – who get caught lying all the time – are still treated with almost total credulity.

The very fact that we are using marijuana as medicine automatically dissolves our credibility in the eyes of many reporters, so no matter what claims we make beyond that, we are really talking to deaf ears.

It isn’t just unfair, it makes one wonder if they have slipped into a recent Tim Burton film.

Police have been imbued with a gigantic and wildly inappropriate amount of credibility, by the media. Every time I read a story about “brave men and women” in the police, I feel a bit queasy. Look at the stats: gas station attendant is one of the most dangerous jobs in North America, but unlike cops, they are not even allowed to wear armour. Or carry tazers. I know I would feel a hell of a lot safer if I was wearing a flack jacket and a glock, I can tell you.

I supposed I should give you some background: I had a number of physical and psychological injuries over my early life and in 1998 I was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia and PTSD. Right there I was met time and again with skepticism because in 1998, FM was still considered a made up disease.

For those of you who know anything about fibromyalgia, you will know that it is a collection of constantly-changing symptoms with no known cause, so they simply named that condition fibromyalia. The fact that it is even more rare for a man to present with this condition made my situation tougher, so I dove even deeper into alcohol and prescription drug abuse. I was deliberately trying to kill myself, without actually trying, if you know what I mean.

The thing that I discovered in this attempt was that I had an enormous capacity to take these drugs and not feel any relief. I would chew up four Tylenol 3s at a time, and just barely get relief. I was eating a whole box of Robaxicet a day. I was 70 pounds overweight and my skin was yellow from a struggling liver. I was taking dangerously high doses of drugs for weeks at a time, and mixing it with booze. The fact that I am still alive is nothing short of a statistical impossibility.

I pulled out of that and got back to more sensible medication use, and then in November of 2001 I had a back spasm that put me in bed for months. A combination of poor diet and my particular medical condition caused my muscles to atrophy much faster than expected, and I found myself tethered to a wheelchair for the next five years. I was like a Grandpa – I could make a flight off stairs, I could walk from the house to the car, but I needed a motorized chair to get my errands done, and I was in a tremendous amount of pain.

Through increased pot use and exercise, and through a big diet change, I was able, in 2007, to get out of my wheelchair for good. A neurologist who had not seen me in years asked “Where’s the chair?!” When I told her I didn’t use it anymore, she slumped back in her chair and her eyes welled up. “I gotta tell you…” she said. “You were, um… people as sick as you never come back from that. They stay in the chair.”

Now… when the media does these human interest stories about people walking again after an accident, or seeing again after a new procedure, or some other unusual and seemingly impossible recovery, the subject of the story is treated like someone to be admired. Even their claims crediting prayer or divine intervention for their recovery are seldom questioned. Not so with pot users, no sir.

Not to toot my own horn, but I feel it is necessary to do so in order to give all of this context.

I went from being a 230 pound pill-addled drunk, to a 125 pound cripple, and then back to a 160 pound upright human – with the help of pot. I dragged my ass out of a wheelchair, I returned to the comedy stage and even landed a few pro shows. I am the most-published anti-prohibition letter writer in Canada, and third most published in the world.

I co-authored the world’s first children’s book about marijuana.

I have beaten multiple addictions without the help of AA.

I use no pharmaceuticals, no junk food, booze, caffeine, sugar, or table salt. My diet habits are better than 99.99% of the population. Better than most doctors.

I am a 24 hour a day caregiver to my sick wife and my sexual function has returned with a vigor.

I am community-minded and politically active.

My mind is more clear and agile than it has ever been, and I am more productive.

My moods are more stable, I am in less pain, and do far better managing my PTSD symptoms.

And, after consuming six grams of pot already today – just as I did every day for the past several months – I am neither high, nor stoned.

But ignore all that and just look at me. I have long hair. I have a beard. I must be a hippie. So nothing I say matters.

If I was short haired and shrivelled up in my wheelchair as I was back in 2005, would I be more believable? To some reporters – most certainly. Because these smug fops – who like to think of themselves as intelligent, creative, and the most critical of thinkers – still buy into the the myths and the stereotypes that are no more accurate today than they were in the 60′s.

My hair has more to do with my celtic heritage than it does my stoner affiliations. If I were to appear at the Highland games in full formal tartans, I would be commended by seniors for my authenticity and adherence to tradition. But when talking about my medical condition, I get derisive skepticism. Context means a lot when it comes to reporting, I guess.

I have been told many times that I would be taken a lot more seriously if I cut my hair. Why? Why pander to the prejudices of the dumbest half of our population. Why should I have to defend my appearance any more than any other person? Because I am a pot user. Nothing I say matters. I am a liar, a stoner, a madman, and a charlatan. I am running a scam on my doctors and all I wanna do is get high, baby. I am Otto the bus driver! Or that is how many reporters seem to see it, anyway. My appearance teases out the bigots. It invites comment, so that I immediately know what kind of person I am dealing with.

And really, would I be more credible? Even when someone as well-groomed, well-established, and eloquent as Mr. Oscapella relays the same information that I send to these journalists, they still scoff. Our side says “Pot is good, here are 20,000 studies to prove it.” they will still quote the cop and his lies, or the overwrought mother every time.

Almost daily I am confronted with an article full of inaccuracies. Cops lie, we tell the reporter, and they do nothing to correct it. Government officials exaggerate, we tell the reporters, they don’t correct it.

They say, “Well, that is what they said. I was just quoting them.” That is no excuse. Reporters who don’t challenge the people they are interviewing are simply helping that person lie!

Okay – maybe that person is simply misinformed. In which case the reporter should do some research and confirm whether or not the assertions are true. Nope. Not in Canada. If a cop says that pot causes mental illness and brain damage and cancer, the reporter will report that the cop said that. If I point out that the cop is actually wrong or lying, it is never corrected. “Just doing my job.” No. No you’re not.

Transpose this lack of courtesy to gays, blacks, muslims, and so on, and you see that there is a huge double standard. The game is fixed. The deck is stacked. It is okay to lie about pot users and the truth is whatever the majority already believes. The bias of some reporters is so deeply rooted, so intrinsically tied to their psyches, that many of them probably don’t even realize they are doing it.

Then there are the letters editors. Apparently all opinions are equal – even the ones that are based entirely on superstition and balderdash. So they print all kinds of letters filled with “opinions”, and those opinions are given equal credence along side of hard, fact-based knowledge. Podunk fools who believe that marijuana is bad and prohibition is good are given equal print space with people who actually bothered to do some research.

Then there are the talking heads. Their tone and inflection is sickening: “The Harper Government” – “Michael Ignatieff…” – “Medical marijuana?” They don’t seem like news readers any more, they seem like actors playing the news reader in a movie.

And the puns.

The result – the general public still seems to think that denigrating pot users is perfectly acceptable.

I was recently harangued by an OC Transpo bus driver as I attempted to medicate near a bus platform in January. As a result I am now forced to launch my second Ontario Human Rights complaint – this time against the province, the city, OC Transpo, and the driver himself. Unlike my first complaint, I am putting a one million dollar price on this case.

And it is all because of the media. The good reporters are too few and too far between, and even the best have biases. I have no idea what to do to change this. None at all. We are at the mercy of these arrogant, overly-self-assured, stupid, insecure, nincompoops. And if we dare tell them how we really feel, as I have just done, we risk alienating them.

I no longer consider that a bad thing.

part 14

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