LICENSING MARIJUANA LEAVES MANY QUESTIONS

Dear Editor:

I like a good Cuban cigar and single malt whiskey. It is hard to grow
Cuban leaf tobacco or set up a Scottish Highland distillery in my
basement, so I pay a high price made up mostly of taxes for this
luxury. If you smoke a pack of coffin nails a day, it is tough having
a backyard of Virginia leaf tobacco drying in the sun in rainy
British Columbia; again, high prices, mostly tax. Or some people can
get grey market packs cheaper because of no tax. I've made my own
beer and wine in the basement to save money, although the end result
is you drink twice as much because it is cheaper so you end up
breaking even and you force barely drinkable plonk with cute labels
on your friends.

If marijuana is legalized and taxed, would people pay high dollars to
go to the friendly Mr. Doob store and buy government taxed weed, when
your grandmother can be growing it in your backyard next to her
petunias? If you don't have a green thumb, a hired gardener can help
out during your annual aerating and fertilizing program. Your teenage
son will be posting pics on his Get Faced-Book page of the monster
Lesquite Island Blueberry hybrid taking over the shed. E-Vite
invitations will be going out all over the properties celebrating
harvest-time parties, bring your own clippers. The backyard bear
problem could go away, with Smokey the Bear falling from the apple
tree . . . OK, you get my drift. Meanwhile, with B.C. bud praised
around the world, gangs will still be smuggling it into the U.S.
market in exchange for guns and cocaine, and people will be still
shooting each other on the streets. When the feds realize mom and pop
grow-ops still flourish to supply the recreational bong user, will
the police be arresting people for not smoking government-taxed, and
probably crappy marijuana? Food for thought.

Barry Miles

North Vancouver