ALEX BOOS IS RIGHT

Dear Editor:

Re: Boos, Again Advocates Caging Humans For Using Cannabis

You know, Alex Boos is right (letters, 12 April). In an ideal world nobody
would do any kind of drug and then nobody would go to jail. I can't wait
until Mr. Boos supermen 'educators' will save us all. Since he says he
doesn't advocate prohibition and obviously isn't fond of decriminalization
and legalization, what else could it be?

Our society routinely exposes children to legal drugs. What else do they
learn, other than the illusion that drugs solve all our problems? How many
adults still think that? Then educators teach them marijuana is as
dangerous as heroin and crack. Promptly learning from their peers that
marijuana is non-toxic, some of them assume they were also lied to about
all the illegal drugs.

Mr. Boos is also sadly mistaken about Europe. First, I don't think any
European country has as much respect for tobacco as we do. And, if there is
any reason for a culture of respect for marijuana in the Netherlands, it is
because the government allowed it to become culturalized. And by doing so,
they were also promptly awarded with steadily declining numbers of new hard
drug addicts, something they attribute directly to their separation of the
hard and soft drug markets. Oh yeah, their cannabis use rates are lower as
well. I don't see how the notion of them being culturally different
automatically means that it couldn't work over here, because what ever
we're doing, it isn't working.

The government has completely lost control of the marijuana market, and is
in no position to gain it back through current methods. It is even easier
for kids to get than booze or cigarettes now. And now it seems they are
getting bored with the old illegal drug du jour, as the new buzz phrase is
that "cocaine is the new weed." Mr. Boos' ideas are outdated and quickly
becoming a joke, and every kid out there knows it. Why don't we all suck up
our pride and actually try some ideas that might actually keep drugs out of
kids' hands?

Tyson Campbell, Calgary