REEFER MADNESS IN THE AIR

My family and I were out enjoying Canada Day when we passed by the
Vancouver Art Gallery. There we saw lots of people, 16 and older,
gathered together on the stairs.

We decided to check out what was happening. We asked someone, and he
said people were handing out free marijuana. That shocked me. I'm 16
and my twin sisters are 10. We didn't expect such a thing to be
happening in public and on Canada Day, when everybody was out enjoying
nature.

Pointing to a flag that looked like a Canadian flag but had a
marijuana leaf in the centre, one of my sisters asked, "Is the
Canadian flag being replaced by that one over there?"

You could smell marijuana about 50 metres from the gallery. A teenage
smoker, passing us, laughed at my mom because she was covering her
nose. After what I saw, I felt emotional. I wondered: What's going to
happen when young kids grow up in this kind of environment and city?

Zahra Jaffar

Richmond