ONLY THE GOVERNMENT COULD SCREW UP GROWING POT

"This bud's not for you" (April 21): Only a government could spend
$5,750,000 to grow marijuana, and fail. Eventually the same government will
hold hearings and issue a report that will explain how it spent $5,750,000
and couldn't grow any marijuana. That report will almost certainly cost
taxpayers at least $500,000.

To be fair, the contractors have managed to grow some marijuana, but the
government undertook the project to fulfil a promise to provide marijuana
to the desperately and terminally ill, chief among them cancer and AIDS
patients. And this has yet to happen -- not one single appetite-stimulating
puff for one single wasting patient, no matter how excruciating and
life-threatening his or her medical condition.

And this will never happen, because this is a promise the government never
intended to honour.

May I offer my services? I can fail to honour a humanitarian, merciful
promise far more cheaply. For a mere $1 million, I will not provide
marijuana to desperately ill and suffering Canadians.

Robert Merkin

(Very amusing, but what the government wants to do is provide a regular,
standardized supply -- and that's easier said than done)