DRUG HAUL NUMBERS MISLEADING

Dear Editor:

I just read with interest a story by Mia Thomas regarding arrests of
drug traffickers (Burnaby RCMP punch hole in drug ring, Burnaby NOW,
Dec. 27).

I have a bone to pick. First of all, she claims that 16 kilograms of
pot is around 95,500 joints.

It's actually typically about half of that, and, more importantly,
what is that point trying to be made by breaking these confiscated
drugs down into their 'supposed' dose amounts?

Very few people can take a full gram of mushrooms as one
dose.

Probably even less people will get over six joints from one gram
(usually it's three, maybe four), and, as for the number of doses in a
gram of cocaine, that's probably not close to the same from one person
to the next.

It makes the author look like she is trying to appear knowledgable on
an issue she has no knowledge about.

And, finally, so what? What exactly was the intended point of all of
this?

If the point was to show how many doses the police got off the
streets, it looks like there wasn't much mushroom or cocaine while it
attempts to make it look as if almost one hundred thousand people were
saved from the evil weed, which is misguided at best!

Perhaps she got these numbers from another source, but whoever it was,
I would suggest they have no clue what they are talking about.

K.E. Byrnes

Vancouver