MAYOR CAMPBELL IS OFF THE MARK ON MARIJUANA

Vancouver drug-users must love Mayor Larry Campbell and his "harm reduction"
policies. First, he backed so-called safe-injection sites for heroin users.
Now he wants to legalize pot.

"I would legalize this and tax the living hell out of it," Campbell said in
a speech last weekend to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. "And I would
ensure that every single dollar, every single dollar of that tax went into
the health-care system."

In other words, it doesn't matter whether the drug is good or bad, as long
as governments can make money out of it. And the crafty ex-coroner clearly
thinks such glib pronouncements will help him maintain his winning political
streak.

But, for the sake of young Canadians, Campbell really should be told to back
off.

First, the legalization of drugs is outside his jurisdiction. It's a federal
issue, not a municipal one. And already there's a federal bill (Bill C-10)
before the House of Commons, which would hit drug-traffickers hard but make
possession of small amounts of pot a less serious offence, akin to driving
over the speed limit.

Second, as a former cop, Campbell should know why it is that such drugs are
illegal in Canada. It's because they pose huge health risks, especially to
impressionable youngsters who still believe that tired, old, hippie rhetoric
that smoking weed makes oneself wise and one's woman willing.

Indeed, it's both sad and ironic how quick our "progressive" politicians are
to condemn tobacco use -- and how slow to criticize that of pot. This is
despite research confirming what I know from my own experience, namely that
smoking marijuana is at least as harmful as smoking tobacco.

Last year, for example, three doctors at Britain's St. Mary's Hospital found
smoking pot was associated with everything from various cancers to lung
disorders, heart problems and mental disease -- and might be responsible for
the deaths of 30,000 people a year in the U.K.

They said clearer anti-marijuana messages were needed. "Prevention and
cessation are the two principal strategies in the battle against tobacco,"
the trio wrote in the British Medical Journal. "At present there is no
battle against cannabis and no clear public-health message."

So, please, Mayor Campbell, don't give our Lower Mainland children any more
mixed messages. Tell them that we in drug-addled B.C. need more pot about as
much as we need more taxes.

Tell them, in fact, that marijuana is a dirty little drug peddled by those
too lazy to do real work.

Tell them being a pothead is like being an alcoholic.

It's a complete waste of a good life.