KUDOS TO JUDGE

Dear Editor:

Re: "Jail's no place for pot grower" (Aug. 16). Kudos to Nova Scotia
Supreme Court Justice Felix Cacchione for refusing to let the Crown and
police railroad yet another non-violent, harmless Nova Scotian for growing
some weeds in the woods.

National polls have shown for years that Canadians want the current
cannabis laws changed. Maybe the police will finally get the message that
wasting money on cannabis offences is an insult to taxpayers as long as
there is a single unsolved murder, assault, robbery or other real crime
left on their books.

I hope that Justice Cacchione shows the same common sense when he sentences
the medical patient involved in the same case, Mike Patriquen, whom the
police and Crown have desperately tried to paint as a Marvel Comics
supervillain, but who, in reality, is yet another persecuted user of
medical cannabis and a patient legally allowed by the federal government to
grow cannabis for his medical condition.

Justice Cacchione should be lauded for his common sense while the federal
justice minister muses about changing our country's outdated, and quite
simply fascist, marijuana laws.

C. W. Donald, Dartmouth