Michael Moynihan: Cork is gone to pot with people openly smoking dope on our streets

You shouldn't have to shepherd kids away from merry cannabis smokes in the middle of town — children are as entitled to the freedom of the city as everybody else without experiencing a contact high

'You shouldn’t have to shepherd kids away from merry cannabis smokers in the middle of town — children are as entitled to the freedom of the city as everybody else without experiencing a contact high.'

In the last week, yours truly had the same experience in the following places in Cork.

Outside the Starbucks on Albert Quay. Near the City Library on the Grand Parade and also in the park nearby. Along Paul Street near the shopping centre. On the beach in Youghal, even.

The common denominator? The sickly sweet smell of  weed in each place. The exact point of origin was hard to locate apart fromin the very first instance mentioned above — a chap in a lanyard puffing away happily, nobody else within fifty yards of him — but the smell was unmistakable.

I don’t partake myself, and I’m aware that that confession immediately puts me under suspicion as a ... square.

Hands up, guilty as charged. I’m so square I’m divisible by four, to nick an old US sportswriting line. The closest I came to a habit was many years ago, when I had an interesting commute home from work in the States.

Turns out that riding in a truck for an hour from the job site with the windows closed, while the driver smokes non-stop, is a good way to ensure a contact high.

'Object to weed and next you’ll be betraying other dislikes which emphasise how you are not au courant with the trends of the day.'

Because of all of that, I hesitated a little before writing this. Not so much because complaining about people smoking weed can be seen as a declaration of your own terminal lack of cool, which I’ve admitted to, but a declaration of being out of touch, which is not quite the same thing.

Object to weed and next you’ll be betraying other dislikes and disgruntlements which emphasise how you are not au courant with the trends of the day.

You might as well start giving out about today’s music and its lack of lyrics, the non-stop nudity on television, the bad language, people who park across two spaces in the Tesco car park, more bad language, the size of Cadbury’s Snacks (yellow version). The 21st century generally.

However, given that I have fully embraced my terminal lack of cool, I thought: why not?

Like some other debates which are far more contentious, there’s a civil rights issue here, though maybe civic rights would be a more accurate term.

Namely, at what point does your determination to do whatever you like become an entitlement to inflict that choice on everybody else?

The freedom to generate a craving for snacks though your drug of choice might seem an unlikely rallying point for civil liberties, but the evidence is hard to gainsay. The prevalence of the smell around Cork is such that at times you’d wonder if anyone  isn’t smoking cannabis, or at least whether anyone is going to the small inconvenience of smoking it behind closed doors.

Tired debate

I’m aware that when someone refers to cannabis in less than reverential tones there can be a reaction that diverts along the lines of comparison: as in, look at the different effects alcohol and cannabis can have on users, why are you picking on my drug of choice rather than your own, the demon drink leads to violence and so on.

I don’t want to get bogged down in this other than to point out one pretty obvious difference between the two. If I’m drinking beer in town I’m not doing so out on the footpath where I can pour some of it down the throats of the passers-by without their consent.

(The other difference between these two substances is sharply and funnily drawn in the song 'The Irony Of It All' by The Streets, which I cite here as a) a couple of minutes’ music which is shorthand for an entire debate and b) a naked attempt to offset my stated lack of cool.) Consent may sound too heavy-handed a description for what’s going on here, but I think it’s appropriate. You don’t have a choice in this matter. Unless you throw on a gas mask you can’t avoid this stuff if you’re in the open air, so you’re stuck with it.

And so is anybody with you.

If you choose to bring small kids into town on a day when the stink is particularly strong, expect to see their noses crinkle when it hits them. Is that fair? 

Yours truly believes that you shouldn’t have to shepherd kids away from merry smokers in the middle of town — that children are as entitled to the freedom of the city as everybody else without experiencing a contact high.

'To the best of my knowledge smoking cannabis is illegal, but I’m sure the gardaí would point to more serious issues that they have to cope with.'

Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe the whims of the selfish are the way of the future when any and all passing fancies are given equal weight.

In that sense maybe the city’s parks should all be redesignated as zones for smoking; over the years I’ve smelled plenty of evidence in at least four of them — so that change of use is already well underway as it stands.

I can’t say what the situation is in other jurisdictions because like many other people I haven’t been abroad since the pandemic started. I have been to Dublin a few times with work recently and the smell is certainly plentiful and prevalent there. When I checked with a pal in New York he said if he held the mobile phone out the window for five minutes it would want to put on a Pink Floyd album and turn out all the lights when he brought it back inside.

Cork has a problem

That doesn’t solve our problem in Cork, though. And, with apologies to those who might disagree, it is a problem.

I don’t have the solution at hand, I admit. I certainly don’t believe that approaching some addled ignoramus to point out the responsibilities that come with shared public space is an interaction that will have a fruitful conclusion, to be honest. Not because they’re likely to be violent but because someone with that lack of awareness isn’t likely to respond to any form of logical persuasion, let alone an appeal to our common humanity.

By their actions shall you know them: if someone feels the world revolves around them to the extent that they’re happy to smoke dope on the street, then pointing out that they share the planet with others is unlikely to have an impact.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

To the best of my knowledge smoking cannabis is illegal, but I’m sure the gardaí would point to more serious issues that they have to cope with. Furthermore, once you get into the realm of saying ‘where are the gardaí when this activity is going on?' in print you’ve moved beyond the zone of simply being square and you have landed into the territory of the truly wild-eyed.

Engaging the agents of the State in this is also wrong for a very obvious reason: the fault is not with the laws of the land but with the person who simply believes nothing is more important than their impulses, which need to be indulged in the instant. There is no legislation to make people less selfish.

Until the revolution comes, I would advise anyone affected by this matter to remain calm. But not to take a deep breath in order to do so.