Think, while you still can

Alcohol, marijuana, gambling, fake news waste time and brain cells

This article was updated at 5pm Sept. 1st to include reference to Alzheimer’s/dementia

Something about Canadian provinces boycotting American alcohol products got stuck in my brain last year and I can’t make it go away. What a bizarre thing to boycott.

I have the same feeling about the fact that Justin Trudeau got elected in 2015 hugely on his promise to legalize marijuana. A lot of voters told me that was the deciding factor for them: Canada was tired of Stephen Harper, Trudeau was young and handsome, and he was going to legalize pot – why not give him a chance? What a bizarre way to choose a Prime Minister.

Doug Ford blathering on endlessly about removing American alcohol from LCBO shelves and the absolutely insane press conference at which he attempted to dump a bottle of Crown Royal out onto the ground while the cameras rolled is an indelible memory.  Clearly, he skipped the science class in which they taught about surface tension, pressure balance and vacuum creation so the whiskey did not pour, creating an embarrassing meme for the ages. It’s so ironically perfect.

Being able to think clearly is a tremendous gift from God. A big chunk of my professional and personal life has been impacted by persons suffering mental illness and chemical addictions; one of my most beloved clients used to run a centre for persons with Acquired Brain Injury. The centre sent out a monthly newsletter titled “The Brainy Bugler” and every issue I read reminded me to be grateful for an uninjured, functional brain.

Any one of those people – those with mental illness, addiction, brain injury or Alzheimer’s/dementia – would likely give everything they owned on Planet Earth to have one month of consecutive days in which they could focus and think clearly about their problems and create a plan to solve them or at least improve their situations.

And yet…since Canada collectively decided legal marijuana was more important than home ownership and a balanced budget, and Ontarians shifted into some booze-soaked netherworld in which the most effective way to express dissatisfaction is to boycott Jack Daniels, this place has gone to hell in a handbasket.

So, federally  we ditched Harper and prosperity for Trudeau and pot; provincially  we rewarded Ford for making alcohol available everywhere and pot shops on every corner with multiple majority governments.

Judging by results, I think it’s fair to say that something has gone wrong with the way Canadians think. Canada doesn’t have a resource problem or an access to markets problem. We don’t have an ancient history of tyrannical governments, slavery, or conquering neighbours.

Instead, we have a relatively current history of intelligent adults deciding to collectively abandon sober, rational thought.

Canada has a thinking problem.

I was working in Ontario’s Solicitor General’s office in 2018 when Trudeau’s changes came into effect and pot shops were being licensed across the province. Ontario was orgasmic at the the opportunity and the revenue potential…we had not one single thought in mind as to how to enforce impaired driving laws on marijuana users, though. The breathalyzer units we were telling the public that police would use did not function in cold weather. On one of the dimmest days of my professional career, a policy analyst from the Public Safety Division dropped off a 3” binder containing information on the old Roadside Sobriety Test, which cops have been administering for a century with no technology whatsoever.

In 2019, I was working for an Ontario MPP when I took a call from an extremely agitated senior lady demanding to know why we were so intent on expanding  locations to buy alcohol and the hours of the stores.

“For God’s sake, teenagers in our town can buy alcohol in any store, at any time, they turn out of one driveway and into another there is beer EVERYWHERE! How are they supposed to avoid it? What is Doug Ford thinking??” she exclaimed. I thought she was correct on every level.

Here’s a news flash from a media source which is NOT subsidized by government: life has not improved since government got into promoting marijuana for everyone, and it is not any better since alcohol became available in hardware stores (!!) and every OnRoute along the 401 (surely, the last place anyone needs to buy alcohol).

Think about it.

Life is also not any better since we  began aggressively advertising online gambling to teen-aged boys whose lives can be ruined by early addiction to gaming, but I’ll save that form of government-endorsed escapism for another whole column.

My point is that if you want to avoid thinking clearly in 2026, government agencies will be lined up to peddle pot, booze, and gambling to help you pass all the time you have until you fall asleep.

Then, you’ll need to wake up and report to some kind of work in order to earn just enough money so that you can afford to escape all over again.

Should you have a spare moment between punching out at work and nodding off at night  to think about anything at all, Canada’s government-funded media will be very happy to fill your time with lies about the source of all your life difficulties: it’s Donald Trump, obviously.

Given a choice between voting for politicians willing to challenge us to do more and better and voting for those encouraging us to pickle our brains while thinking as minimally as possible, we keep choosing the latter.

I guess if I was half as smart as I believe I am, I would open a storefront selling “Clear Thinking Lessons” and see if I could make a go of the business.

I’ll think about it.