MORE COMMENTS ABOUT BOOS', LETTER.

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 Boos' ideas are outdated and quickly becoming a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