quote:Vetting of candidates is another issue, and with all due respect to those who ran and had to withdraw because of their past, obviously concealed from the screening process, or even because of inappropriate behaviour during the campaign, the NDP needs a much better process in place to examine and evaluate prospective candidates, as obviously some folks just cannot be trusted to show enough good judgement on their own.

As one of the four candidates to resign, I might have a unique perspective on this issue.

I have actually been approved as a potential candidate three times.

I sought the nomination in my riding when I joined the NDP in 2003, again in 2005 and then again in 2007. Each time I had to fill out the form which asks about criminal record, lawsuits, and any other controversial behaviour.

I have no criminal record and have never been arrested or charged with a crime. But every time I wrote down on the form that I had broken pretty much all of Canada's marijuana laws at some point, and that I wasn't ashamed of this. In 2007 I also mentioned that I helped run the Vancouver Seed Bank, which sold seeds for hundreds of plants, including marijuana seeds.

I always expected someone to call me and ask me to explain this, or to provide more details about my marijuana background and my work. But this never happened over three election cycles.

Frankly I don't think that my activist work, my current marijuana use, my past use of psychedelics, or my Pot-TV videos would be any reason for me to be disqualified from running as a candidate for the NDP. However, it was the timing and manner of my background being released to the national media that created the main problem.

In retrospect, we should have sent out a press release 18 months ago, when I first won the nomination in my riding. At that time, a press release which said "NDP candidate admits past LSD use" or whatever, would not have been a big deal. And then by the time of the election hopefully the issue would be dead. And if there had been a big problem, I could have withdrawn my nomination long before any election call. But nothing like this was done, leaving it to our opponents to release this information at the most damaging time and framed in the most damaging way to myself and the party.

For the record, the videos shown on the news were all 8 to 10 years old. There is one video which shows me driving an hour after taking DMT. This is a short-acting psychedelic substance which wears off entirely within 20 minutes. (DMT is the main psychedelic ingredient of the Amazon shamanic beverage Ayahuasca.) This same video also shows me saying that "I've got one rolled for the road." Marijuana use does not significantly impair driving ability, and I was certainly not impaired while driving on any video. However, even if I was impaired, this is a ten-year old video, and I don't think that is necessarily any reason to bar me from public office.

I certainly could have been even more forthright and detailed about some of the controversial parts of my work. But at the same time, as the former leader of the BC Marijuana Party, former editor of Cannabis Culture Magazine, co-founder of the Vancouver Seed Bank and so on, it seemed to me that there should be no surprise that I have written and said some things that could seem controversial, especially when taken out of context.

quote:It was apparent that the Liberal and Conservative and Green supportive mainstream press went to town on some of what should not have been NDP candidates.

I generally avoided the media deluge I got after my resignation. But the media that I did do was surprisingly supportive and friendly. For instance, when I appeared on the Mike Duffy show, he called me "a team player indeed" and said "I hope that young people will follow your example of getting involved in the process."

Actually I didn't see any serious attacks against either myself or the NDP over my resignation. Most of the commentary was lighthearted and humorous rather than attacking us.

If having used marijuana or psychedelics means you are forever forbidden from seeking political office, then we will be seeing an entire generation of Canadians excluded from the political process.

The worst part of this was actually what happened to Vancouver Quadra NDP candidate Kirk Tousaw. Unlike my fairly outrageous videos which showed me using psychedelics and apparently toking before driving, Kirk has a single video on Pot-TV which shows him sharing a bonghit with Marc Emery. For Kirk to step down as an NDP candidate, was not fair, and likely a strategic error.

Of course, I'm hardly the only politician from any party who has used marijuana and other drugs.

** Liberal icon Justin Trudeau has smoked marijuana with Marc Emery and other people I know on many occasions. His dad was a past marijuana user and his mom used to smoke pot at 24 Sussex Drive.

** Conservative Rahim Jaffer, who tried to use marijuana against the NDP in his riding and then lost to them, is a past and probably current pot smoker himself, according to a few people I know who were active in the Alliance and Conservative party.

** Ontario NDP MLA Cheri DiNovo used psychedelics and also smuggled LSD into Canada from the USA. "We used to import LSD from California - it was genuine Osley Acid in those days - and we did it in hollowed out bibles." The NDP stood by her, and she won. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheri_DiNovo

** Current Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie was charged with two counts of trafficking heroin in 1975, and spent 17 months in a federal penitentiary serving his sentence. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2003/11/24/24nov03fentie.html

** Ontario Conservative Leader John Tory used marijuana as a high school and university student, and wrote articles calling for lighter sentences for pot dealers and explaining how he drove while stoned.

** Andre Boisclair became leader of the PQ despite admitting to having regularly used cocaine between 1996 and 2003 while serving as a member of the Quebec legislature.

** Prime Ministers who have smoked or used marijuana include Pierre Trudeau, Paul Martin and Kim Campbell.

** Gilles Duceppe and Jean Charest both admitted to having been pot smokers in the past.

** I wonder if the great Canadian icon and historical novelist Pierre Burton would have been barred from seeking public office because he showed "young people" how to roll a joint in detail on the Rick Mercer show. (Burton was a lifelong marijuana user.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lMOxuciYQ