Te Radar: Art is warmth in a southern theme park

HUMOUR

I recently had the misfortune to spend the better part of a sunny Sunday afternoon strolling around the quaint medieval theme park that is Christchurch.

As it was freezing and slightly unnerving outdoors I ventured into the new Art Gallery where I marvelled at an exceptional collection of contemporary New Zealand Art and at the many teenage couples in the museum.

Initially I thought the city was brimming with sophisticated young art connoisseurs, but as I watched them resolutely walk past Art, I began to suspect that they were there simply because it was warm and free.

It seems that a rudimentary knowledge of art is proving a cash cow for some further north.

Certain "unscrupulous cannabis growers" have realised that if you add yellow to blue you get green.

Thus they have been taking cannabis dyed blue after being sprayed with herbicide by the Police, adding yellow to it, and selling the tainted produce to unsuspecting consumers, who are apparently becoming ill.

The evidence of this seems a little flimsy, consisting of anecdotal descriptions of people, who after smoking the tainted goo-jons "coughed, and felt a little sick".

I thought that this was par for the course for pot smoking. Or so I have heard. Anecdotally.

Despite knowing that these "unscrupulous growers" are doing this, and that people's health is at risk, the police refuse to say what is in the spray.

Waikato police spokeswoman Kris McGehan said: "If you are going to buy or consume illegal drugs, that is the risk you take."

I was going to write to her to remind her that as a police spokeswoman she is supposed to be speaking on behalf of an organisation whose ultimate task is to protect the wellbeing of the populace.

But after making a snack it slipped my mind.

The irony that her callous disregard for the public good comes in the same week that products were recalled because of contamination with minuscule amounts of lead is not lost on me, nor should it be on her or her superiors.

One thing is for sure, if the people who dabble with pot weren't a little concerned about this problem beforehand, I suspect they will be more than a little fretful about it after they have dabbled.

It was probably coincidental that this occurred as that other great monument to drugs and insanity concluded.

I would like it recorded here that if I ever complete the Tour de France, or for that matter even a simple half marathon or community fun-run, then I demand to be drug tested.

I further stipulate that if my test is negative, then, as I must clearly be insane to have subjected myself to the rigours of such an absurd event, I should forthwith be committed to whatever it is that passes as a mental hospital these days.

Probably an unguarded house in a small rural town, somewhere near children.

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