LINKING POT TO SHOOTINGS A MISTAKE

Re. the recent Canadian Press article, headlined Top cop apologizes for
misleading claims in cop killer case:

I was surprised to see an apparently reputable and well-run news agency
react to the recent RCMP slayings with such uninformed and inaccurate
statements.

The article was not based on the facts or circumstances of the crime at
all. It also failed to differentiate between legal medical cannabis grows
and black market grows.

It places the whole cannabis community in a bad light when this type of
article fails to recognize that many thousands of Canadians rely on
cannabis for medical problems.

Many Canadians are literally forced to grow their own supply of meds
because they have been refused access by Health Canada.

Unfortunately, the medical user with a few plants in her/his closet for
medical reasons is lumped in with million-dollar grow-ops. It is time to
differentiate between grow-ops and closet grows!

The way to defeat commercial grow-ops is not through prohibition, which has
never worked for drugs or alcohol, but rather through legalization and
regulation.

This would almost immediately crash the cannabis prices and effectively
render commercial grow-ops a money-losing proposition, with a big risk for
a small gain.

Not only that, it would free up all the resources being wasted on cannabis
prohibition to be used to battle meaningful and important problems, such as
meth labs, chop shops and child pornography.

The property owned by James Roszko did not house a grow-op. The 20
marijuana plants he had were discovered by police there to investigate
other matters.

This case is all about a cop-hating, deranged lunatic who - because of the
inadequacies of our judicial system - was left at large to murder those he
hated most.

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli has apologized for blaming the
Mounties' deaths on pot.

"Within hours of the deaths, RCMP spokespeople told the press that they had
found 300 plants worth $400,000 during a marijuana raid that involved Green
Team Members," according to The Canadian Press. "It later was revealed that
the investigation was for auto-part theft rather than pot, that the Green
Team hadn't been in attendance (rather it was rookies from the auto-theft
unit), and that the killer was a well-known psychotic gun nut with a
history of violent outbursts and weapons offences, not an organized drug
criminal."

Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan refused to reply to Zaccardelli's
recent comments.

Almost immediately after the shooting, McLellan called for a tough
anti-growing bill to be rammed through Parliament at the earliest possibility.

She has admitted, however, that she was shaken by the police deaths that
occurred in her home province, verging on a confession that she may have
over-reacted.

Even Conservative MP Randy White, known for his outrageous anti-pot
sentiment and calls for harsher sentences for pot lovers, criticized
McLellan for capitalizing on police deaths in her call for tougher laws,
when he admitted that pot was likely not to blame for the four officers'
deaths.

"The first thing that happened was that everybody acted based on a lack of
information," White told the press.

All in all, politicians seem to agree that the government will eventually
react to the tragedy, but that marijuana was not a factor.

Whether the abrupt about-face will be enough to stop legislative or budget
changes that would increasingly target grow-ops has yet to be seen.

Don Shunt

Rimbey