MAP IT OUT

Dear Editor:

The Media Awareness Project (MAP) is the "special interest group"
identified by Echo editor Paul Wells as stumping for the legalization of
marijuana.

The mapinc.org/drugnews Web site just archived its 100,000 item on various
drug-related issues of the day from news agencies across the
English-speaking world.

I'm very proud to be the number four published letter-to-the-editor writer,
with more than 100 letters to my credit.

I thank the Echo editor for allowing the drug debate. There was a time, not
so long ago, when people were afraid to write their newspapers to express
their views on drug issues. It has been my experience that once the MAP
writers get the ball going, the locals jump into the fray when they realize
no one will get arrested for stating an opinion.

I would like to close off, though, by reminding Wells that the war on drugs
is almost 100 years running -- 1908 for Canada's first drug law, the Opium
Narcotic Act. Prescription rights were born of that act -- until then
parents used to send their children to the five and dime to pick up their
tinctures -- about 70 per cent of the medicine had either cannabis, cocaine
or some opiate derivative.

Eighty people a day, every day, die in Columbia alone. There have been
1,000 "drug dealers" killed in the past month in Thailand's crackdown. When
the damage done by the war on some drugs is added up worldwide, the Iraqi
conflict would pale in comparison to the lives ruined or lost to prohibition.

I can think of no more worthy cause than to end the longest running unjust
war in Canadian history.

Chris Buors, Winnipeg