SENATE PUSH FOR LEGAL POT NOT HIGHLY THOUGHT OF

The Editor,

Regarding the Sept. 4 Senate report 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 who died in all six years of the Second World War 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 Surrey