Yeoman's `Erroneous Hysteria' Doesn't Help Marijuana Debate

Tom Yeoman has not done his homework. I had hoped that his reefer-madness
myths had been put to rest in 1997 when Ontario Justice John McCart ruled,
``Consumption of marijuana is relatively harmless compared to the so-called
hard drugs including tobacco and alcohol. There exists no hard evidence
demonstrating any irreversible organic or mental damage from the
consumption of marijuana. Cannabis is not an addictive substance. There
have been no recorded deaths from the consumption of marijuana. There is no
evidence that marijuana causes amotivational syndrome.''

Besides, Yeoman's erroneous hysteria is irrelevant to his defence of
criminalizing non-violent cannabis users. Even if cannabis were as
dangerous as tobacco, (where are the bodies?), it would make even less
sense to abdicate cannabis distribution, (and profits), to the unregulated
black market. Contrary to popular belief, prohibition is at the bottom; not
the top of the regulatory scale. We have more control over corn flakes than
we do the so-called controlled drugs and substances.

For the sake of discussion, let us overlook our over-burdened courts,
prisons and police forces and temporarily accept that Tom Yeoman knows
something that Justice McCart, The Lancet, the New England Journal of
Medicine and every major study on the subject inexplicably missed. Which of
the following dangerous substance distribution systems makes the most sense?

The Tom Yeoman System:
We remove all taxes and tariffs from the substance.
We remove all forms of regulation, quality control and labelling.
We make the substance worth its weight in gold.
We hire anyone of any age from any walk of life, criminal background
and level of education to distribute the substance.
We sell the substance 24 hours a day to anyone of any age anywhere,
including school grounds.
We pay our distributors on commission to encourage aggressive market expansion.
We stock our distributors with more addictive products in case they
temporarily run out of our substance.
We arm our distributors so they can defend their extremely valuable
products and protect their market share.

The Le Dain Commission System:
We tax the substance, directing the revenues proportional to the
popularity of the substance, toward education and research toward
making the substance safer.
We regulate quality, labelling and advertising.
We hire licensed, trained, background checked, salary paid distributors.
We prohibit sales to minors.

MATTHEW M. ELROD
Victoria

A Few Citations To The Contrary

Tom Yeoman claims that ``the legalization movement has only a
psycho-spiritual and intellectual desert that it calls peace. Its strength
is emphatically not forensic.'' Since Mr. Yeoman didn't bother to provide
citations, and since I don't accept his claim of omnipotence when it comes
to drug issues, I'll tell you what I know, and cite them.

``The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health.''
The Lancet, Volume 346, Number 8985, Nov. 11, 1995.

``Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically
active substances known to man.'' U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young, Docket No. 86-22, Sept. 6, 1988.

``The costs to a significant number of individuals, the majority of whom
are young people, and to society generally, of a policy of prohibition of
simple possession are not justified by the potential for harm of cannabis
and the additional influence which such a policy is likely to have upon
perception of harm, demand and availability. We, therefore, recommend the
repeal of the prohibition against the simple possession of cannabis.'' from
The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs,
1972 (The LeDain Commission)

This intellectual desert obviously covers some vast territory.

TIMOTHY J. MEEHAN
Toronto

Claims Little More Than Diatribe

I just read Tom Yeoman's diatribe on marijuana that you printed. He makes a
lot of unsubstantiated claims. I'd like you to explain how you could print
his material without even checking its accuracy. Take this statement: ``We
know we know that tetrahydrocannabinol, marijuana's psychoactive property,
impairs brain functions. Loss of memory, loss of motivation and ambition,
loss of present and future best efforts. And look what it does to critical
thinking!''

There are several government-funded reports which refute each one of his
hysterical claims including the La Guardia Commission, the Shaffer
Commission, as well as the Canadian Le Dain report. Several articles
appearing in last month's Newscientist magazine (superbly researched and
referenced) expose the facts and dispel the myths surrounding marijuana.
Yet you print Yeoman's column without so much as a disclaimer to warn the
reader that the author is expressing his opinion and has not provided any
references to substantiate what he's saying.

Some of his other statements totally contradict accepted medical facts,
such as ``smoking up constricts the blood supply to the optic nerve''.
Marijuana is a known vasodilator. When under the influence of marijuana,
patients experience increased blood flow. I consider your publication to be
worthless since reading Yeoman's article; if you'd print that, how can I
believe anything else you print?

DAVID SOUL
Boston, Mass.

Harmful? So Is Nicotine

FOOTNOTE:

Editor:

FOOTNOTE: So what if marijuana is harmful? So is nicotine and rat poison
and we are free to purchase those products. In any event, by what twisted
argument can anyone believe that the state has the right to prohibit its
citizens from ingesting any damn substance they feel like ingesting? What's
next, pound cake prohibition? There is no effective marijuana law in
Canada. Anyone who wants it can obtain it. The law is a total joke,
enforced by a joke government and a joke
Prime Minister. And let us not forget that prohibition always was, and
always will be, a failure. Did (Tom) Yeoman learn nothing from the failure
of alcohol prohibition? Hard to believe that Yeoman has the gall to invoke
the name of a great freedom fighter, George Orwell, in his defence of that
brutal state-sanctioned, prison-filling pogrom we call drug prohibition.
It's all about freedom, no doubt a frightening prospect to a sanctimonious
windbag.

ALAN RANDELL
Victoria

Innuendo Mixed With Mere Myth

``Is marijuana use less harmful than alcohol or tobacco consumption?'' Tom
Yeoman poses this scientifically settled question at the beginning of his
column, but he never answers the query directly. Instead he rehashes myth
and innuendo. I suspect I know why. As much as he hates marijuana, the
answer to the question runs counter to the premise of his column. Of course
marijuana use is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco consumption,
especially if one defines harmful as increased risk of addiction and death.
Tobacco and alcohol addict millions and kill hundreds of thousands of
people. Marijuana kills no one and it is not physically addicting.

For Yeoman's notion of the righteousness of marijuana prohibition to be
true, marijuana use would have to be more harmful than death itself. Maybe
Yeoman truly believes this.

STEPHEN YOUNG
Roselle,Ill.