U.S. BUSINESS SPARKED MARIJUANA MYTHS

Editor, The News:

Those folks back in the 1920s were right, you know. Alcohol is a much
greater evil than marijuana ever could be.

Consider all the news stories that have been printed about drunk drivers,
drunk hooligans, drunk husbands beating on their wives, etc., ad nauseum. I
know people who are sweet, kind and thoughtful until they get a few drinks
under their belts - they then turn into vicious animals.

Tobacco, too, is a much worse blight on society than reefer could possibly
be. House, car and forest fires are part of the legacy of smoking
cigarettes. How many people have died in their beds because they just
absolutely had to have one more butt?

(I have seen no record of a house or car fire caused by a doobie. Joints
and roaches don't smoulder, which is why the user must keep relighting them).

Some fires may have been caused by grow-ops, but if weed was legal, then
there would be no grow-ops to burn.

To say that marijuana is "a gateway to hard drugs" is ridiculous.

One could extend that argument - albeit a short trip from the sublime to
the ridiculous - that since most people use toothpaste, toothpaste must
also be a gateway drug.

The biggest lie of them all is that pot is addictive. Pot is a
recreational, mild drug which could result in a psychological dependency
for some, but not for everyone.

There is nothing in marijuana that makes it addictive, unlike tobacco,
alcohol, coffee, heroin, cocaine and a whole gamut of pain killers. Why,
then, is marijuana illegal?

Simple. It was a make-work project for one of the most favoured men in
Washington, the man who led the forces of prohibition, a Mr. Harry Anslinger.

DuPont had invented a new product and wanted to replace all the ropes on
all the ships with his new "nylon."

They hired newspaper mogul W.R. Hearst, who did such a great job of
propaganda fomenting the war on Mexico, to start a war on hemp and
continued it to include marijuana.

That was when the law enforcers started to get carried away.

Rodney N. Cockroft

Abbotsford