POT BILL NOT GOOD ENOUGH

In the March 16 editorial, Ottawa Drug Bill Should Go Ahead, which
demanded that the "so-called marijuana activists" accept the justice
of Prime Minister Paul Martin's so-called decriminalization bill, The
Record says that marijuana "from a medical perspective, is no more
harmful than tobacco or alcohol."

Has The Record actually looked at the data on alcohol and tobacco?
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
tobacco accounts for 435,000 deaths annually and alcohol kills 85,000.
How many are killed by marijuana? It is difficult to find any,
although this does not prove that marijuana is "harmless."

The point is that there is no reason that the millions of peaceful and
otherwise law-abiding Canadians who use cannabis should have to deal
with the black market and worry about having too many grams of a plant
while alcohol is celebrated at every sporting event.

If the "so-called marijuana activists" had not resisted injustice,
then we would not even have made it this far, and seriously ill
Canadians would have no hope at all of getting medical access to cannabis.

For centuries, English-speaking peoples have resisted injustice and
The Record should expect no less even from "so-called marijuana activists."

Richard Cowan

Vancouver