They Stole My Weed

While I was recently undergoing chemotherapy and radiation my son, who lives in Joburg, sent me a parcel containing edible cannabis in the form of gummies and lollipops. Well-intentioned, he believed this would help to alleviate the unpleasant side-effects of the treatment.

My taste buds had gone haywire and I had lost my appetite for almost all food and drink, so I thought there was nothing to lose by giving cannabis a try. (I had not smoked the stuff for more than two years and there wasn’t a joint in the house, otherwise I might have gone that route already.) On a Sunday, about half way through the treatment, I decided to ingest half a gummy about an hour before lunch, in the hope that it would help me face the meal. The effect of this jelly baby was pleasant but mild. I made it through the meal and, because I missed being a little pissed after the usual several glasses of vino, which now tasted like sulphuric acid, I thought I would try half a tot of brandy in water. Not only was it like drinking camel urine, but I almost immediately felt dizzy and disorientated, and I had to stagger into the bedroom, assisted by my wife, who was alarmed at the sight of my rolling eyeballs and white lips drained of blood.

I soon recovered, but it wasn’t an experience worth repeating. When I reported this to my son, he apologised for not warning me to avoid mixing marijuana with alcohol. What I had been struck down with was a classic ‘cross-fade’.

This incident got me thinking about another unfortunate experience with the herb. More than two years ago I had been cultivating a few marijuana plants intended for recreational use when thieves entered my property and removed them without my permission. I remember writing something in response to this and, after a search, found it drafted as ‘They Stole My Weed.’ Dusted off, it can finally see the light of day.

They Stole My Weed

I came back from a walk and got busy with the evening routine. When the dog began to bark I could tell that this was something serious and not trivial like a passer-by walking down the road. I ran outside, the dog continued to bark furiously and I looked about for trespassers. Too late. Suspecting the worst, I hurried to the greenhouse and, sure enough, my beautiful dagga plants were gone. There had been three of them, all over a metre tall and heavy with buds. Now all that remained were stumps, half cut through and then snapped. A slit in the shade cloth sneered at me, contemptuous of my pride in having nurtured and raised such fine specimens.

After the initial shock on discovering how I had been robbed and my private domain violated I was consumed by feelings of anger and hatred. How dare they come onto my property uninvited and steal the plants that I had spent months growing to maturity? If only Ruby had been alerted to their vile presence a few minutes earlier. She would have cornered them; I would have pressed the panic button on the remote and then attacked them with a pick handle and bludgeoned them to a pulp. Well, maybe not. They would probably have stabbed both me and the dog to death.

When I stopped seething a day or so later it occurred to me that this was not a novel experience, and when I tried to recall all that has been stolen from me over the past seventy years I was amazed at how much there was. The first item on this list was a battery razor. It was pinched from the toiletry bag I left on my bunk in the dormitory of a Youth Hostel in Venice back in 1972. In the ensuing decades I have been robbed of three bicycles, a car radio, a Toyota bakkie, a Ford Escort, three wheels off a Tazz, a ladder, half of a sound system, several metal roof sheets, a 9kg gas bottle, an angle grinder, drums of paint, garden chairs, a wheelbarrow and two 7.5kg dumbbells. And I mustn’t forget Alfonso, the Boxer puppy who was kidnapped and later released unharmed.

Considering the number of items stolen I am tempted to make some generalizations. Larceny amongst all societies is so widespread and pervasive it can be classed as a basic human trait. From an evolutionary psychologist’s perspective the ability to steal from other humans must have given individuals and groups an advantage over those less adept at thieving and pillaging. Over hundreds of thousands of years we have become genetically programmed to seize any opportunity to steal from the vulnerable, the unsuspecting and the distracted.

The petty manifestation of this is associated with the poor and the working class, but white collar crime takes place on a far grander scale and is perpetrated by people who are motivated not by necessity but by greed.  And even more devastating in their plunder than the powerful individual and the Corporation has been the criminal actions of tribes and then whole nations. Throughout the five thousand years of recorded history people have been banding together to attack other groups in order to steal their goods and their women. In the Colonial era it was about subjugating the indigenous in order to loot their riches and exploit their resources, and at the same time capture and enslave millions of individuals for the purpose of forced labour. And now, long after the abolition of slavery, the present economic system continues to deprive millions of their right to share in the wealth generated by technological advances.

The theft of my Cannabis plants has left me even more certain in my conviction that human beings are incapable of controlling their destructive impulses and that the extinction of such a verminous species would be in the interest of all other forms of life on the planet.

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