RE: ONE MORE TIME, BECAUSE I LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE TAKE VERBAL POTSHOTS AT ME

Alright you dared me to it. Last time I checked the United States had about
100 times the population that Alberta has, so I'm not surprised that most
of the people who wrote you are from there. But alas, there are people in
Alberta who agree that prohibition is useless and a complete waste of
money, me being one of them.

First of all, the Bible does not support marijuana prohibition as it
clearly states that God gave us all the seed bearing plants for food. It's
actually right on the first page. Clearly, I should be able to eat it
without violating Christian spiritual directives. About the only ban that
could be upheld on cannabis, following this logic, is on the smoking of it.
This is very far from reality though, as we all know you are not even
allowed to hold it in your hand without violating a Canadian law.

Second of all, drugs are rampant in our culture. My anti-prohibition views
stem from seeing my home town of Hinton get completely overrun by crystal
meth a decade ago. How was prohibition helping then? I have friends who got
hooked on speed and used marijuana to successfully get off of it. Again
prohibition was not helping anyone. To top it off, meth is still a problem
there and I was informed recently by a recent high school graduate that
"cocaine is the new weed." I'm scared as hell for all the kids out there.
Police routinely lie to them about marijuana, as I was, which completely
destroys the credibility of the police on other matters amongst our young
population, which in turn exasperates the hard drug problem.

Prohibition has had 80 years to work its magic to no avail. Billions of
dollars have been wasted in this effort. I am absolutely shocked that there
are not more so-called rednecks in this province who are up in arms about
this. This is literally another case of the Liberal government wasting our
money.

Just to assuage your fears, I have never heard of anyone supporting a drug
free for all. The idea is that through legalization AND regulation we can
more effectively control the drug problem. Drugs are hiding everywhere
entirely because of prohibition. Who knows whose kid is going to run into them?

I did not always have these views, but once I saw for myself what is really
going on out there I learned. And you're going to have a hell of a time
actually convincing me that prohibition is a good Christian thing to do. It
might have seemed that way at one time, but the truth is painful.

Tyson Campbell, Calgary

I don't personally support either your view or that of prohibition. The
Bible is there for a guide and you may use it as you wish. I choose to live
by what the scriptures tell me, and not interpret them for my own ends.
However you are correct on one point, God did dedicate the use of
everything on earth for man's use, including arsenic, but I don't see a lot
of people jumping up to take any. We all have the God given free will to do
what we chose, some choose wrongly.

Ted Okkerse