OF GUNS AND WEEDS

To the editor,

With all due respect to Mr. Kapches, it seems he has been misled by
Canadian government officials into believing that four Mounties died trying
to stop marijuana cultivation. In his letter "Pot: No Longer a Harmless
Head Rush?" (Gazette 137:22), he states that marijuana smokers who don't
grow their own are "hypocrites" because they contribute to the miseries of
our national police agencies trying to fight Canada's Diet War on Drugs. It
is believed that one in three Canadians has used marijuana. However, I
wonder=85 how many own guns?

Immediately after it was announced that these four officers were
senselessly killed, some politicians tried to turn marijuana into the
culprit. I felt as if I was back in the United States, where I grew
up. Why didn't Canadian officials question the nation's gun laws? Was
it because the Liberal party has already bungled their first major
piece of gun legislation, the infamous two billion dollar gun registry
foul-up? It seems that those two billion dollars could have been spent
differently. Certainly, it seems that our rural RCMP officers need
better training, as many news organizations have reported one of the
officers killed was off-duty and unarmed.

Without a doubt, this has been a grave tragedy for Canada. My heart
goes out to all RCMP families, and even the family of the killer.

However, we should remember that it was a deranged man with a criminal
record holding a high powered rifle that killed those officers, not a
weed.

Phil Duguay

Fourth-year history student