GAMBLING, POT USE NOT COMPARABLE

To the Editor,

Re: If gambling is good, why not legalize pot? Guest Comment, July 27.

While I understand completely the rationalization between linking
prohibition of pot to the hypocrisy of government-endorsed online
gambling (while running voluntary self-exclusion programs for
in-person gambling), I do not feel that is the best method to
highlight the argument.

Pot should be legalized for a host of reasons, most of which the
writer touched upon: reducing organized crime, the repeated failures
of the war on drugs to be anything but a war on the poor, harm
reduction, and the myths and complete fallacies perpetuated by
uninformed officials.

I don't support using yet another example of something that truly is
bad being legalized/supported as a reason for why something that truly
isn't bad should not be illegal.

The reason is only that it does not properly get the message across to
people who aren't already singing in our choir.

I would love for our government's online gambling ring to get shut
down immediately, or at the very least, refuse credit card payments.

I see it as promoting a real and devastating addiction and making it
easier for people to dig themselves into debt they can't get out of
and suffer under high interest rates on credit cards. I'm sure credit
card companies love this online gambling business.

Pot is not the same. You can't buy pot on a credit card, so you aren't
going to wake up one day and find yourself in debt. It is not
addictive to anyone that doesn't have problems that would have them
addicted to anything that made them feel good (watching TV, junk food,
food in general - anything can be addictive to someone in the right
circumstance).

Pot is not physically addictive. Arguing pot's legalization on the
basis of continuity groups it with things that are truly bad -
gambling, alcohol, cigarettes - and is easy for someone who doesn't
support gambling or smoking to say that all of these things should be
illegal or at least made difficult to engage in.

Pot is not the same. Long-time heavy pot users don't suffer the health
deterioration as do long-time alcoholics; pot can be ingested in many
ways other than smoking that makes the comparison between
cigarette-caused cancer and pot-caused cancer moot; and no human being
can smoke thousands of dollars worth of pot in a day the same way you
could blow thousands of dollars at an online casino.

Trying to group these things together as if they are at all similar is
an attempt to appeal to people who don't think pot should be
legalized, but I think it hurts as much or more than it helps. It
perpetuates the myth that pot is a societal ill, rather than trying to
shed light on how pot is not a societal ill.

Amiee Gravell

Nanaimo