Pubdate: Fri, 14 Dec 2001
Source: Kamloops This Week (CN BC)
Copyright: 2001 Kamloops This Week
Contact:  http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1271
Author: Kevin Millership

TIME TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

Editor:

Well, after seven years of lobbying and countless letters written and 
received from various government officials, the House of Commons is finally 
going to vote this month on whether to decriminalize marijuana in Canada.

It's about time.

The first documented use of marijuana as a medicine appears about 2300 BC 
when the legendary Chinese emporer Shen Nung prescribed chu-ma (female 
hemp/marijuana) for the treatment of constipation, gout, beri-beri, malari, 
rheumatism and menstrual problems. (Queen Victoria used marijuana for 
menstrual problems.)

Marijuana was first introduced to European medicine by Dr. William 
O'Shaughnessy in the middle of the 19th century. He described the 
inebriating effects of marijuana as being "The most cheerful kind, causing 
the person to sing and dance, to eat food with great relish and to seek 
aphrodisiac enjoyments. In the persons of a quarrelsome nature it 
occasions, as might be expected, an exasperation of their normal tendency. 
The intoxication lasts three hours, when sleep supervenes. No nausea or 
sickness of the stomach succeeds nor are the bowels at all affected; the 
next day there is a slight giddiness and vascularity of the eyes, but no 
other symptoms worth recording."

If our federal government votes in favour of decriminalizing marijuana next 
week, it will send a message to the youth of Canada, and all Canadians, 
they are not out of touch with reality. The reality is it's legal to smoke 
tobacco in Canada, a well-known killer, and illegal to smoke marijuana in 
Canada, a well-known medicine.

Go figure?

Vote yes to decriminalize marijuana in Canada! Do it for our health; do it 
for Canada.

Kevin Millership

Kamloops
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart