MEETING NOT CERTAIN

Editor, The Gazette

I am writing in regard to the statement made in the letter to the
editor in the Gazette of Oct. 28 that Mayor Brian Taylor had agreed to
hold a public meeting on medical marijuana. This statement should
have read "may hold a meeting" as reported in an article in the same
issue by Shella Gardezi, Gazette editor. I was at the city council
when a request for a public meeting was made by one citizen supported
by Coun. Cher Wyers. The official minutes of that city council meeting
state, and I quote, "Mayor Taylor advised that he would consider such
a meeting."

I, personally, cannot see what a public meeting would achieve as we
already had a public forum in the spring. The citizen who is
constantly requesting a public meeting and the councillor who is now
supporting her request were not interested enough to attend that
public forum where they would have been informed of the problem of
medical marijuana.

I have never heard anyone calling for a public hearing on medication
and painkillers based on highly addictive opium. Are we now going to
have public hearings to approve all prescription medication? If Mayor
Taylor holds a public meeting on this subject, will he be faced with
an uninformed crowd with a lynch mob attitude?

Normally, once a medication has been approved by the federal
department of health, it is transferred to provincial jurisdiction.
This has not happened in the case of medical marijuana. Why? Coun.
(Joy) Davies is trying to get this prescription medication transferred
from federal to provincial jurisdiction, as it should be, by having
our municipality ask the province to request that the transfer of this
medication be done, as is with all other medications.

By the tone of those letters to the editor, it appears to me that this
is a personal vendetta by one person against Coun. Davies. If it is
not, maybe the writer should come clean and state exactly what her
objections are to medical marijuana.

Paul Pinard

Grand Forks