COOPER ON TRACK WITH POT COLUMN

I would like to commend Dana Cooper's editorial on the Senate's ill-advised
recommendation to legalize pot. For all the reasons he mentioned, the whole
exercise was and is an embarrassing waste of taxpayer's dollars. The
committee largely had its mind made up when it was formed in 2000.

I would warn us all that this is no pipe dream. If we don't want to see pot
legalized with all that would bring for our children and children's
children, then we need to be saying so loudly to our governments. There is
a real lobbying effort going on and this scientifically, socially and
ethically unfounded recommendation is being pushed by many of the public
health elite in this country. They have systematically ignored or
downplayed all the warnings and have gone instead with the vogue thinking
that drug use is not only unavoidable but somehow normal. This is cop-out
realism to the extreme.

Dr. Colin R. Mangham, Langley, B,C.