HIGH TIME FOR A LITTLE BIT OF TRUTH

RE "O Cannabis" (April 27): I congratulate you on such an in-depth article
about the failure of Canada's cannabis prohibition, although I take
exception with Dr. Raju Hajela's inaccurate and misinformed comments
regarding the recreational use of cannabis.

He suggests that there can be "devastating consequences" to people trying
cannabis even once; he must mean the munchies, because unlike alcohol,
tobacco, or even aspirin there has never been a single death attributed to
the use of marijuana in over 3,000 years of recorded use.

Furthermore, many recent studies suggest that cannabis may actually possess
anti-carcinogenic properties (P. Massi et al., 1998; Stig O. P. Jacobsson
et al., 2000; I. Galve-Roperh et al., 2001).

Finally, Dr. Hajela discounts himself completely by stating rather
cryptically that the wrong message about cannabis is getting out to the
public because "there are a lot of marijuana smokers amongst the media."
Yikes! And they say that marijuana makes users paranoid!

This kind of alarmist misinformation would be laughable if it didn't lead
to such expensive, corrupt, and ineffective policies. From the 1972 Ledaine
Commission on, every major public or private study that has ever looked at
our drug policy has recommended relaxing our cannabis laws. It's high time
for a little bit of truth about marijuana use!

Philippe Lucas

Director of Communications

DrugSense

(Ah, we miss the days when we were only accused of being a bunch of drunks