CONTRADICTORY LAWS

Your editorial on legal pot smoking suggested the pot user should
have done the "respectful thing, moved a few metres away from the
guy's bar, then puffed himself into nirvana." That statement is an
eloquent demonstration of the stigma and discrimination medical
marijuana users have to deal with.

Nirvana? We aren't using pot to get high, we are using it to
alleviate serious, often debilitating medical conditions.

People use cancer-causing tobacco in front of just about every
building in Canada yet people trying to alleviate debilitating
medical symptoms are expected to go hide by the dumpsters? No way!
That would be treating us like second-class citizens and we won't stand for it.

It is bad enough that we have to carry special papers everywhere we
go to keep us out of jail because we have a medical condition. But
now we are expected to stay home, or sneak into trash-filled alleys?

We do want the same laws that apply to cigarette smoking to apply to
us. But provincial laws prohibiting the use of marijuana -- even
licensed medical marijuana -- contradict the federal regulations that allow it.

That is the whole point of the human-rights complaints.

Russell Barth,

Ottawa