WRITERS SPLIT ON POT

Prohibition Won't Work

Dear Editor

In the Jan. 15 edition of the Langley Advance News, under your heading Zero
tolerance, Jonathan Maryniuk made a few unsubstantiated claims that I feel
need to be addressed.

He said, in part, "Marijuana is worse healthwise than cigarettes . . . If
we legalize marijuana, we make it a valid choice in our communities. This
choice is not safe for people . . . Zero tolerance is the way we need to
address this situation."

With all due respect, I don't profess to know the answer to the legalizing
of marijuana or even its decriminalization, but I do know that prohibition
does not work, never has, and never will, not in a society that pretends to
the whole world that freedom of choice is our main asset.

It didn't work with alcohol, which is far more destructive than marijuana,
and cost an irretrievable amount of money over a short period of time, and
it won't work with anything else. It simply won't work!

Your correspondent would have us all believe that pouring more and more
money into punishing those who would consider it their right to choose the
kinds of pleasure they wish to indulge in.

But I suggest that we have laws that would take a Philadelphia lawyer his
or her lifetime to interpret, laws against stealing, murder, rape and every
conceivable form of crime, and they have done nothing to rid the world of
crime and served only to publicize the short-sightedness of those who have
appointed themselves to be our legal, moral and ethical guardians.

As for Maryniuk's rather naive remark, "I propose we . . . slap more
legislation onto marijuana with harsher penalties and enforce the law," I
suggest that he read our Constitution and Charter of Rights before trying
to cure society of a headache by hitting it over the head with a sledgehammer.

Throwing good money after bad leads only to individual and collective
bankruptcy, and there is every good reason to wonder if those who condemn
the use of marijuana are being unwitting dupes of those who produce and
distribute alcohol.

Ken J. Marsh Surrey

DARE Doesn't Help

Dear Editor,

If things go as well in Canada as they did in America, the first class to
graduate the D.A.R.E. program, [First class takes DARE, Jan. 18, Advance
News] is likely to be the first class with an increased rate of drug use.

Credible long term studies have proven D.A.R.E. to be at best ineffective
in lowering drug use, and at worst counter productive, or better at
encouraging drug use than stopping it.

I'm sorry Canada has chosen a failed anti-drug program for it's children,
it's the children who will pay the price and somehow, that just isn't right.

Jim White Oregon, Ohio

Pot Users Okay

Dear Editor,

In response to Frank G. Sterle Jr. [Media too lax, Jan 18, Advance News],
there really isn't much evidence that cannabis causes mental illness.

The World Health Organization concluded that cannabis, while certainly not
completely harmless, is less harmful than either tobacco or alcohol.

The largest study of the long-term health effects of cannabis use to date,
done by the Kaiser health group, concluded that there was no significant
difference in the health histories of cannabis users versus non-users.

If Mr. Sterle is interested in the facts on the health effects of cannabis,
he can find the full text of both of these studies, as well as the full
text of most of the other major research on cannabis and health at
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer.

Clifford A. Schaffer Director, DRCNet Online Library of Drug Policy Canyon
Country, CA

No Health Issues

Dear Editor,

Letter writer Frank G. Sterle, Jr., [Media too lax, Jan. 18, Advance News]
may not be aware that the constitutionality of our cannabis laws will be
challenged in the Supreme Court of Canada later this year.

Among the accepted findings of fact to emerge from the over seven years of
scientific review and expert testimony leading up to the challenge we find
"there exists no hard evidence demonstrating any irreversible organic or
mental damage from the consumption of marijuana."

If Sterle is of the opinion that cannabis users (such as himself) should be
criminalized because of a "growing body of evidence that marijuana inflicts
irreversible damage on the brain, including actual brain atrophy," then I
suggest he waste no time in providing this new evidence to the court before
he becomes a vegetable.

Matthew M. Elrod Victoria