| Photo: Eideard |
| It’s not just the young folks in Nigeria who enjoy marijuana. Maybe my street smarts are fading, but dude doesn’t look gangsta to me. |
Next time you start to get discouraged about the sometimes inaccurate news coverage marijuana gets in the United States, try to remember that things could be worse — much worse.
To prove this, you need go no farther than allAfrica.com, a curious little site which shows just how clueless coverage can be.
A March 23 article on the site with the imposing headline “Adura Gang of Marijuana Smokers” calls the Nigerian government to task, not for mistreating marijuana users, but for not treating them badly enough.
“In Nigeria, federal, state and local governments tend to fight against these evils to achieve peace and harmony,” we are told. “However an excursion to many part [sic]of the country shows that war against these ills is almost lost.”
According to this depressing little article, Adegolu Street, in Alagbado, a suburb of Lagos, “symbolises poor enforcement of the nation’s law on hard drugs while the youths consume Indian hemp.”
See what they did there? Indian hemp equals “hard drugs,” we are given to believe. How quaint!
“In this street, youths in their prime consume the illicit drug shamelessly and brazenly as if their illegal activity enjoys the approval of the law,” we are breathlessly told. “Residents said it is even unfathomable that this spectacle of lawlessness could be flagrantly advertised in an area that has Police Command.”
But that’s not the worst of it. In a particularly pot-phobic purple passage, we then learn:
“However, most disheartening is the fact that the social misfits meet day and night at the entrance of three schools at No 9, not minding the incalculable damage the offensive odour of their poisonous wraps wrought on the health of the environment,” a supposed “resident” is quoted as saying.
You get all that, stoner? You are a social misfit, and you are doing incalculable damage to the freakin’ environment, for Gosh sakes, with the very smell of that “poisonous” stuff.
Our “resident” goes on to remind us of the other bad shit we’re bringing about by getting high:
“Also, the damage it wreaks on effective teaching and learning as well as transfer of socially approved cultures, cannot be underestimated,” the “resident” lamented.
Oh, hell. It sounds like I’m lucky to even be able to type, after all the dope I’ve smoked.
But surely that’s just anti-pot hysteria… Because if it actually does that shit to you, considering the amount I’ve smoked, I might not even remember to
Note for the literally minded: Steve is kidding. He barely touches the stuff, honest.