TRIVIAL LIMITATIONS OF RIGHTS

Thank you for publishing my letter Dec. 18, but when you commented, "Worse
things could happen than legalization, but we can't see the freedom to puff
on a joint being on the same level as the abolition of slavery", you fell
into the same trap as the Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin did
when she told the country: "The Charter does not protect against
insignificant or 'trivial' limitations of rights."

What good is a Charter that can prevent the government from imposing slavery
upon us and yet allow it to whisk us off to jail for not following the
state's dictates on such "trivial" matters as, to use lawyer Karen Selick's
words, "how often we change our underwear, what time we go to bed at night,
what colour we paint our walls, (or) how we style our hair"?

Alan Randell

(For Selick's argument to hold, you have to assume smoking pot is comparable
to those actions -- we can't see it)