HOW CAN THEY COMMENT ON A MEETING THEY DIDN'T ATTEND?

I had written an article based on happenings at a public Campbell River
meeting which focused on marijuana and other drugs.

Two men, Russell Barth (Ottawa) and David George (Bellingham, Wa) wrote
rebuttles to my article. What are people from Ottawa and Bellingham doing
stating comments and issues that were raised during a Campbell River
meeting. Were you there? Why don't you take your own observations and
concerns and voice them in your own community?

Russell Barth argued "adults insisting on teens that pot is dangerous
undermines their credibility when they discuss truly dangerous drugs like
meth, coke and heroin." This is not true since marijuana acts as a
dangerous stepping stone to what Russell Barth likes to refer to as "truly
dangerous drugs." People don't wake up one morning and decide to try coke
or heroin. If you ask any heroin addict what their first drug was, it is
almost always pot. What happens when you get a small taste of sugar? You
want more. The same is true with drugs. And that is also why some people go
on to even harder drugs, because they need something stronger to give them
a high and handle their cravings.

David George claimed that I had been misinformed in my facts. This is not
true since I had done my research and have talked to people whose career is
involved in drug issues before commenting on anything. My comments were not
just based on fact, but from real life experiences and things I have
witnessed, showing me how pot can have a negative impact on a person's life.

Also, David George stated that the claims of better driving and better
school performance are valid. He went on to support his statement saying
that tests done on prisoners in New York during the 1940's showed better
overall learning curves, and better overall performance on certain tests.
On what - basket weaving? Unfortunately for David George, it's not 1940
anymore and we have come a long way since then. This includes advanced
medical research, new findings and new research on drugs which indicate
that many old theories and statistics have been found wrong, because of
such advancement. Also, over the last 65 years, THC levels in pot have
increased and changed, due to new growing methods and experiments,
resulting in higher THC concentrations.

Both Russell Barth and David George looked down on the government's
decision and made claims on how "prohibition is the true crime and how it's
hypocritical to focus on an unproven harm of a prohibited substance while
ignoring the proven harm of legal substances."

Who says it hasn't been proven to be harmful? The fact that pot isn't legal
here in Canada and in most other countries around the world says quite a
bit. For one thing, unlike legal drugs, marijuana's chemicals will stay in
your body for months or even years, whereas the chemicals of most other
legal drugs are flushed out in four to seven hours. It contains 400
different chemicals in which 60 of those have been proven to cause cancer.
People have also indeed died as an indirect result of pot. The thing is,
people will never read that on a death report or an obituary. Instead they
will read about how the death occurred because of a car accident, ignoring
the part marijuana had to play. There have been many situations like this
but in many cases, have been "swept under the rug."

One of David George's concluding sentences was, "If you really cared to
keep cannabis out of the hands of young people, you would admit that legal
regulation will do that job much more effectively and more cheaply than
blanket prohibition." Well I am an 18-year-old girl, smack in the centre of
today's youth circle and the problems with cannabis that I see almost
everyday among many other youths won't be fixed that easily. I see how pot
affects some of the youth at my school who become chronic users. There are
kids who are unhappy and all they want to do and think about is pot, in
turn making them even more depressed when their "high" wears off. They lose
their motivation to do well in school, stop caring about their future and
sometimes drop out of school altogether. It changes their personality and
they become bitter, angry, and rebellious. Some feel like then can only
have fun and become more confident when they are "high."

I have heard some of them say, "I want to quit, but it's too hard." Are you
saying that simply legalizing marijuana would solve all these problems? As
a youth myself, I disagree.

Many people like the ones that have responded to my previous article, will
tell you marijuana isn't harmful. Consider who is telling you that. Are
these the same people who are trying to sell you pot or to justify their
own use of the drug?

Amy Van Elk