Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, is the new Prime Minister of Canada. Though a long standing Liberal I left the Liberal Party some 15 years ago to join the Conservatives. I voted for Mr. Stephen Harper. He lost after two terms as Prime Minister. I am by all measures a Canadian. I loved Mr. Harper's service to the country. I loved the Conservatives in power if only because the Conservatives and NDP are the only parties that have cared for Western Canadians. So I'm sad today that Mr. Harper and the Conservatives lost.
I personally am soured by Mr. Justin Trudeau. I appreciate his 'honesty' that he smoked marijuana while working. Was he smoking marijuana while a school teacher or just as a legislator? I hear he has perhaps minimized the times he smoked marijuana. Politicians aren't known for their honesty.
I am glad too that marijuana has essentially be decriminalized this last decade. I fundamentally don't agree with legalization because that actually means that marijuana can then be sold like bread or milk anywhere. I was very disturbed that the illegal marijuania distributions centres of Vancouver were offering free marijuana to anyone who voted.
What fundamentally bothers me though, is that I personally smoked marijuana. The last time was 17 years ago. I bought it from doctors, smoked it with doctors and saw a psychiatrist who recommended I smoke it. The trouble was, that I felt wrong about smoking marijuana and working as a doctor. It especially didn't seem right that I was smoking marijuana and working as a psychiatrist.
I was never 'impaired' at work. I wasn't an 'impaired physician'. I didn't present a 'risk to patient safety'. I just didn't think it was right that I was breaking the law. I also knew too many people who had suffered negative consequences of using marijuana, loss of employment, legal records and jail time. I have seen far too many relationships and families devastated by marijuana.
Justin Trudeau's mother was a marijuana addict. I have thought that Justin Trudeau must be in some serious denial about the effects of marijuana being the son of an addict himself.
I have mixed feelings about the process of my own recovery now. Personally I appreciate the spiritual benefits of the wonderful learning of recovery. I am so very thankful to have the clarity of mind restored that seemed somewhat lost the last year I smoked marijuana. Administratively thought the process was essentially 'punishment'. It was framed in different language but the process was still punishment. It was heavy handed, threatening, bullying, incredibly expensive, and shaming. There was and remains a 'double standard'. There are those who didn't get 'caught' and those who got 'caught' and people like me who sought help only to get caught up in the mixed message of a very sick and disturbed administration.
Now here I am today an addiction medicine specialist. I have patients who were like me. They have safety sensitive jobs. I see doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals. I am expected to provide a rigorous treatment program with many random urine testing and onerous requirements because as I was told, these jobs are a 'privilege'. They're not a right.
Yet here the highest job in the country has gone to a person who has committed crimes without consequence. He's never been subjected to random urine testing, required to see psychiatrists, required to see addiction medicine specialists, required to attend counselling, had supervision in the workplace, or had the threat of losing his job if any suspicion fell on him. He has not had to be 'caesar's wife' in regards to his personal behaviour vis a vis the drug using crowd.
He hasn't had to deal with both the wonderful people in the recovery health care movement and the utterly sick and disturbed power weilding petty beaurocrats who holier than thou revel in their being above the law because they haven't been caught in their addictions. Being in the system I know so many people who have 'avoided' detection like the privileged who 'avoided' Vietnam leaving that war to be fought by the average joe.
Maybe my angst today is about the rich and privileged and the sons of the rich and priviledged. I don't like the double standard. Indeed I could have at any time 'avoided' the negative consequences that came from my seeking help when I was concerned that my failure to do so would eventually lead to a poor judgement. I held myself to a higher standard than those about me. I was 'offered' ways 'around' the 'system'. I was told I could 'deny, deny, deny, and lie, lie, lie' . Those close to me who had been 'caught' actually have used lawyers successfully to avoid consequences. Seriously people have told me over and over again what a fool I have been for my honesty.
I appreciate Justin's honesty therefore. I appreciate that the laws are wrong. There are many law which we don't agree with but there is a sharp division between the law breakers and those who don't. At least there once was. I don't appreciate that so many criminal drug dealers got rich by being smart and have 'cleaned up their act' by whitewashing their past. I know so many incredibly wealthy people whose wealth has come directly from the multi billion dollar drug crime industry. I'm a hopeless idealist and romantic. I have a horrible scar of cynicism.
There but for the grace of God go I. I am not here to "judge" Justin Trudeau. The country of Canada has accepted that a man of acknowledged deceitfulness and drug abuse is acceptable in the highest position. The former head of the Supreme Court of Canada was a roaring alcoholic or had a bit of a problem with drink (depending on what language one chose.) But he wasn't engaged in criminal activities. He wasn't a law breaker, that I know of. Unlike Justin Trudeau and his mother and a minority of Canadians.
I've been arguing for years that our judges need to be random drug tested if we're doing that to our athletes, doctors and pilots. There's a double standard. There's hypocricy that reigns.
I'm just struggling today wondering how I'm going to do my job. I'm kind of regretting too accepting the considerable abuse I experienced in recovery. The stigma and shame and being shamed so seriously by my superiors who I learned later were drunkards and did more drugs than I'd ever done. It's such a hidden epidemic. Meanwhile the minimization and deceit is rampant.
That's what I remember most about when I had the occasional toke. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. I just thought everyone should 'lighten up'. Hell, I hoped everyone would 'light up'.
And it will get worse.
I see Justin Troudeau, not as others do but because of my own journey and the journey I have seen others on, I see the double standard. I wonder how I can cause people to lose their incomes and jobs and future and families by saying, it's because of the drugs ,when doing drugs has won Clinton, Obama and now Justin Trudeau their highest positions. How can I say to kids not to smoke dope. At least President Bush got recovery. Mayor Ford got recovery. Most of Hollywood got recovery. But not these guys.
It's confusing for me. It worries me. I'm struggling today. I don't really care that much if the Liberals beat the Conservatives because they're two sides of a very centrist coin. I'd rather the Liberals over the NDP but truthfully I'd really rather have had Mr. Mulcair Prime Minister over Justin Trudeau. Tom Mulcair wasn't creepy. But I'm probably wrong.
I did this silly little study and asked a hundred or more dope smokers and drug addicts and straights if they wanted their pilot or physician to be smoking marijuania. They answered unanimously that they didn't want him smoking marijuana.
Now I have the head of a multi trillion dollar business called Canada admitting to smoking dope, not once, not twice, but countless times. We don't accept the 'word' of a doctor that he isn't smoking dope. We don't accept the word of a criminal that he isn't doing crime. We drug test and find that countless, a very very high percentage of people who have ever used drugs, lie.
This is my personal problem. It's a problem I have with Canada today. It's a problem I have with our justice sytem. It's a problem I have with the supreme court. It's a problem I have with the police. It's a problem I have with authority. It's certainly a problem I have with the rich and privileged and those above the law. It's a problem I have with double standards. Its a problem I have with Justin Trudeau and his dynamic twisted family.
Maybe I'm just envious too. I've thought of that.
But this is why I didn't vote for Justin Trudeau more than anything else. That's the best I can get to the matter of why I will support him as Prime Minister but I don't think I'll trust him. I won't trust him even as much as I trusted his father. But I was younger when I voted for his father. I find it harder to trust today. I've been personally hurt by marijuana, drug dealers, tobacco companies, and especially drug addicts and twisted authorities and their sick double standard attitudes. I don't trust easily today. I don't trust Justin Troudeau.
I hope though that as Prime Minister he will earn my trust.But right now he has made countless promises. And I know drug addicts are the best people at making promises.
So I don't expect he will subject himself to random drug testing. Even the Supreme Court expects that of others but won't submit themselves to that. I would only ask that he make the one promise that really counts to me.
Justin, can you promise not to smoke dope any time during your reign as Prime Minister. Really, if you talk the talk, can you walk the walk!
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