MARIJUANA IS BAD FOR YOU

Regarding the Sept. 4 Senate report recommending marijuana legalisation by
comparing it to cigarettes and alcohol, our morgues are already full of
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 over-all 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 legalises 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 legalised before we
knew its deadly effects. Do we really want to risk similar numbers for
marijuana?

Marc Ander