PROHIBITION AGAINST DRUG NOT A SAFE POLICY

To the editor,

RE: Police say ecstacy is anything but a "safe drug:"

Who cares what police say about any drug? They lie, spin, hyperbolize
and exaggerate about drugs, and always have. Meanwhile, junk food
(i.e.; donuts) will kill many times more Canadians this year than all
illegal drugs combined! Sugar is the real killer, but like an adult
jingling their keys to distract an infant who is about to be
vaccinated, the police distract the media and the public by diverting
the argument!

For example, they keep telling everyone that marijuana is "dangerous,"
even though all history and science proves otherwise. Marijuana has
never killed anyone, and recent science out of Germany even shows how
cannabinoids (found in marijuana) stimulate the body's production of
TIMP-1, which helps healthy cells resist cancer invasion.
(www.salem-news.com/articles/january112008/cancer_treatment_11008.php)

This might explain why pot chronic pot smokers have lower - not higher
- - rates of cancer than tobacco smokers (as a recent California study
showed).

But even if ecstacy were as dangerous as, say, alcohol - shouldn't
that be that all the more reason to take it out of the hands of kids
and gangsters, and put it into the regulated hands of responsible,
tax-paying adults? If I am wrong, then, by that same "cop-logic", we
should re-criminalize alcohol in an effort to make it "safer".
Prohibition is anything but a safe policy.

Russell Barth