>>REVIEW
THE DEVIL’S PICNIC
By Taras Grescoe
HarperCollins, 359 pp.
Home is where you can do all sorts of things that no one need know about – unless you choose to let them. For Taras Grescoe, travel writer, book reviewer, social commentator, wit and erstwhile civil libertarian, home is Montreal, where he intends to hold his so-called Devil’s Picnic.
At it, he plans to offer to select guests all manner of forbidden items, such as absinthe, Norwegian moonshine, cigars, unpasteurized whole-milk cheese and coca tea.
The Devil’s Picnic chronicles his adventures in the pursuit of the accumulation of said commodities and, in the end, getting them into the country. It’s a long, strange trip, beginning with the premise that once something is forbidden to us, it becomes desirable. Prohibition is decried as not only being unsuccessful, but also symptomatic of a nanny state.
Grescoe, I think, misses the point on this matter. Maybe that makes me – to use his own words – one of "the safety-conscious, the temperate, the holier-than-thou, the politically correct, the chickenshit" – but the idea that some things should be prohibited is not necessarily indicative of a wish to deny people sensory pleasure, or to demonize them. It can also be protective of civil liberties. Some things are simply bad for people and they should be avoided.
If legislation becomes necessary to protect people from themselves, then so be it. This is especially true in the case of noxious substances like tobacco, when the merchants, purveyors and users of the substance cannot be trusted to self-regulate or to respect the rights of people who choose not to partake in them. Damn the cost to society. Grescoe’s right to enjoy a Cuban cigar ends when the smoke gets into the air I have to breathe, and his right to drink moonshine ends if he decides to drive a car or do anything that might affect me or anyone else.
Coca Cola is a case in point. The American war on the coca plant is essentially an attempt to eradicate the plant in order to prevent cocaine from being made and sold in the developed world. Yet, indigenous peoples have used the plant to make tea or chew in a raw form for eons, with apparently no harmful effects and some beneficial medical ones. The plant seems to make it easier to deal with altitude and cold, and is no more addictive in its traditional uses than caffeine – perhaps less so. Yet the Drug Enforcement Agency has banned all uses of coca leaves. All, that is, except as an ingredient in Coke and some highly regulated prescription drugs. It’s the importation of coca for the benefit of the multinational soft drink manufacturer that best exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of the so-called "war on drugs."
I could go on, but I won’t. I’m going to let you read the book for yourselves, and I think you should. Grescoe is a superb writer, and The Devil’s Picnic is a fascinating book. Best of all, it’s not forbidden – at least not yet. |
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