NO WAY MARIJUANA WILL BE LEGAL SOON

Regarding "Pot legalization getting closer," Daily News We Say, June 23:

As a federally licensed medical marijuana user and as someone who has
worked in the "legalization" movement for nine years, I can tell you
this: pot will never, ever be legal.

As long as there have been humans, there have been humans bent on
controlling other humans. So as long as there are humans on earth,
there will be some form of marijuana prohibition. It is a valuable
medicine that competes -- and beats -- the pharmaceutical
equivalents; so naturally, the prohibition on it will never end.

The cops, lawyers, jailers, politicians, pharmaceutical companies,
counsellors, and criminals are all making too much money to allow
this cash cow to die. And they are all working together to keep it going.

And people who think that all this chatter about "compassion clubs"
and court rulings somehow means that the public is changing their
view are misguided as well. Remember the LeDain Commission? Forty
years ago? Of course not, no one does.

I have actually heard people say, "Pot should be legal, but people
who grow it and sell it should go to jail for a long time." Without
them even realizing it they just contradicted themselves. That is, in
a nutshell, the Canadian attitude towards marijuana: misinformed,
confused, hypocritical, judgmental, sanctimonious, fearful, and
vitriolic. Classic Canadiana.

And now with Mad King Steve in total control of both sides of the
government, we can expect a steep increase in the number of arrests
and a big increase in the length of jail sentences. Just last summer,
he changed the law making anything involving marijuana a "serious"
offense, meaning it is harder to get bail and harder to "plead out"
to a lesser charge.

Finally, Health Canada plans to take away our Charter-guaranteed
right to grow cannabis for our own medical purposes, and force us to
buy it from their chemical-laden, gamma-irradiated, pre-ground,
ditchweed supply.

So really, anyone who still thinks pot is "going to be legal soon"
must be high as a kite.

RUSSELL BARTH

Educators For Sensible Drug Policy

Federally Licensed Medical Marijuana User