POT CONCERNS

Editor, The Leader:

Regarding the Senate report (Leader, Police Chief Pans Legal pot, Sept. 6)
recommending marijuana legalization by comparing it to cigarettes and
alcohol, our morgues are already full with victims of tobacco and alcohol.
Why do we need a third legal drug added to the mix? Marijuana smokers
scream until they're blue in the face that it's never killed anybody, while
writing off as coincidence that regular marijuana smokers get lung cancer
almost as often as their nicotine-addicted counterparts. Or that marijuana
shows up in the blood of those who cause fatal traffic accidents almost as
often as alcohol. The overall death rate is relatively low precisely
because marijuana usage is relatively low, but that will change fast if we
put marijuana into corner stores as the Senators recommend. The world's
biggest tobacco companies have already trademarked brand names like
"Acapulco Gold" so if any country ever legalizes marijuana, they can move
fast to get packs of 20 'Acapulco Golds' into the supermarkets next to the
bananas, or to lace existing tobacco brands with subliminal levels of
marijuana.

Tobacco will kill roughly half of Canada's five-million-odd cigarette
smokers alive today. Big Tobacco kills more Canadians every year than the
42,000 that died in all six years of World War II combined, and recruits
thousands more Canadian kids every week. Tobacco was legalized before we
knew its deadly effects. Do we really want to risk similar numbers for
marijuana?

Marc Ander, Director, Airspace Action on Smoking & Health, Surrey