Home Summit Submissions Summary Links Email

”Welcome and Introduction”
Dominic S. Cramer, Regional Coordinator, Canadians for Safe Access

Hi everybody, I’m Dominic Cramer. You may know me from such altruistic organizations as Toronto Hemp Company, Toronto Compassion Centre, Sacred Seed and Canadians for Safe Access. I, along with my fine friends here and abroad, am grateful for the opportunity to bring everybody together for this monumental event, and we’re thankful for your participation.

We are here today for a number of very important reasons.

First and foremost: when we heard the recent round of propaganda spewing forth from the lips of our appointed and elected public servants, read their ridiculous report and recommendations, and learned of their plans for a “marijuana grow-op eradication summit,” we felt we had no choice but to counter that with something a little more progressive and reasonable.

Our idea was primarily to diffuse some of the hysteria the OACP and our Provincial Government’s Community Safety Ministry are trying hard to create and perpetuate, and to provide some more rational opinions for the media to consider so that they might choose to be less helpful with publicizing the OACP’s sensational and irrational recommendations and thinly veiled self-promotion.

Second, we thought it would be excellent to have a conference, hopefully regularly, to discuss some of the many extremely important issues that we’ve been investigating for years - to discuss, explore, develop and promote rational alternatives to the drug war and the horrible injustices and suffering that we are witness to on a daily basis. It’s anyone’s guess where this strategizing and sharing of information can lead us.

Third, we all know that we need to do everything we can to make this information available to the general public. It’s easy for us to forget how disconnected from these issues most Canadians are, how easily they are misled, and how likely they are to not grasp how this issue relates to the bigger picture. We hope that our Report will be well received, and that both Summit and Report will have an impact on the level of understanding regarding cannabis among participants, the Canadian public, and beyond.

And of course there are many other purposes for this event, one of the most exciting being the opportunity to strengthen our connections and cooperation. Drug policy reformers are, perhaps more than ever before, a force to be reckoned with, and the current trend towards greater unity and taking things to the next level is extremely exciting. Those with an interest in drug policy reform are people who care greatly about far more than just drug laws, as these laws are representative of a far greater set of problems relating to the ways in which our society is structured and controlled.

We had originally anticipated a very informal meeting with our efforts concentrating on media releases and the formulation of a final report full of reasonable recommendations. We were originally going to meet in the space I’m currently renovating into a garden supply store, smoke shop, glassblowing studio and meeting place, and I wasn’t planning on wearing a suit.

As you’ve noticed, things have progressed significantly from the original plan, thanks in part to the overwhelmingly positive response from all of you, and Green Truth has evolved into a very exciting and vibrantly multi-faceted conference and publication. I look forward to seeing what the future holds regarding further conferences like this one - hopefully we’ll see you all here again next year!

My main function here today will be to act as MC and Moderator. We will be enjoying presentations on quite a variety of relevant topics. Please feel free to ask questions after each presentation and to participate in discussions of topics that interest you. We do have many presentations scheduled, and many of our speakers are on tight schedules and will therefore be breezing in and out of here, so we’ll do what we can to accommodate everyone and keep the conference moving at a comfortable pace.

Many thanks to the people who helped organize this event, especially Marko, Tim, Blaine and Steven. We had very little time to put this event together, and as much as we may have enjoyed our meetings, we also got lots done.

Before I introduce our first speaker, I’d like to make a few points about the situation that brings us all here.

As you all surely know real well, cannabis prohibition has caused infinitely more harm to individuals and society than this beneficial plant ever could. People suffer and die all day every day at the hands of our asinine policies of prohibition. That is the crux of the issue as far as I’m concerned. Our drug laws are ludicrous, corrupt, murderous and enslaving policies that are perpetuated with ignorance, misinformation, dishonesty and greed.

More generally, the direction our society is headed is extremely disturbing in many ways.

Our legal and political systems are bloated and archaic - we need to dramatically modernize them, a major overhaul. We likely need to start from scratch, leave out all the ridiculous policies while defining a modern and comprehensive system of reasonable regulation, enforcement, representation, etc. I'm not talking about putting anybody out of a job, just making our once-proud public servants a little more useful, effective, satisfied and appreciated.

Too many laws have been made over the years, too many freedoms given up, based upon hysteria, ignorance, greed and corruption. Too many man-hours are wasted enforcing ridiculous prohibitions, causing a great deal of futility, corruption and dissatisfaction within the professions involved. Most police officers really do want to serve and protect our populace, rather than rising through the ranks by busting cannabis users. Many of our politicians really would love to be more effective, to better fulfill the needs and wishes of those they were elected to serve, to more productively help direct Canada towards increased prosperity and international appreciation. The majority of doctors want to actually help the people who look to them for care, rather than making them zombies, overdose victims, or pseudo-scientific guinea pigs. Those of our public servants whose heads are out of the sand don't want to be enforcers of parasitic, slave-driving monopolies. They're sick of feeling that too much of their hard work is futile and unappreciated. But they're stuck within this well developed and entrenched system that desperately needs to be changed.

Our system of prohibiting nature's gifts is insanely counter-productive and extremely hazardously profitable for a select and self-serving few. Those who support the idiotic 'war on drugs' are invariably either misinformed or massively profiting from these prohibitions. We've outlawed relatively harmless natural plant products like marijuana, opium, and coca leaf only to be controlled, manipulated and murdered by massive conglomerates providing their derivatives or alternatives. The most frustrating part of it all is that the average compassionate and intelligent human being doesn't realize they are being used as pawns in this age-old game of power and control.

Or perhaps the most frustrating part is that the enlightened can't help but feel like we're unavoidably trapped in an endless cycle of prohibition, exploitation and profiteering. What war will they try to force on us once we finally achieve drug peace? Sure, wars and conquest make money, but they're not the only way. There are lots of other ways to achieve and maintain a successful society, and they aren't all reliant on enslaving entire populations. There are lots of conscientious, environmentally friendly, philanthropic businesses - they're not all evil of course. But we allow and encourage a system in which the least virtuous have the most opportunities and the greatest potential for wealth and success. Is this a fundamental flaw of the human condition, or are we able to break the cycle? I say the latter is reality, and I believe that this incredible time of unprecedented communication, education, shared traditions and global unification is what's going to allow us to do so. One of the problems is the neophobic quality of the average human being - fear of, and resistance to, change. But life is ever-changing and you either move forward, or fall behind.

We need to rally together for a strong, united, purposeful and impactful Canada. We need to learn from the mistakes and successes of our past and other nations and help lead the world into a brighter future.