LOTUS STORE OWNERS CARE ABOUT LESS FORTUNATE

Re: Wouldn't parents care if son bought drug paraphernalia?, letter to the
editor by Joan Williams, June 9.

Ms Williams says Lotus owners should be ashamed because they sell pipes and
they have a child?

I have met this baby about whom you are so worried and he is one happy
child.

I just happened to meet Sage at the York Region Food Network community
garden.

His parents are among many people who want to grow their own healthy food
and grow extra for people who have not enough.

Alisha Wolfe and Adam Chaplin are obviously deeply concerned about the world
in which Sage will grow up.

To make comments about their parenting is cheap and hypocritical.

The majority of children or adults who abuse drugs and create the social
problems most people associate with street drug use probably didn't have
parents who sell bongs.

There's no cause and effect there.

Even if they did, they'd probably be much less likely to get pulled into the
violent culture of street drugs, which is where police should be spending
their time.

A trip to Lotus does not make you feel despair at the state of the world.

It makes you see an alternative. I'd like to live in a town that supports a
store like that. But Councillor Joe Sponga knows better than I do about what
I should be allowed to purchase.

Speaking of Mr. Sponga, I saw our municipal tax dollars at work one day when
this highly agitated person came into the store where I work and screamed at
me because a supplier had dared to stop on Main Street to make a delivery.

Where does Mr. Sponga go next on his crusade to save Main?

If he is interested in cracking down on unwanted retail activity, maybe he
should go into people's houses and tell them what they can and can't buy and
nip the whole shopping crime process in the bud, so to speak.

LIZ JEFFERSON

NEWMARKET