Pubdate: Fri, 13 Sep 2002
Source: Medicine Hat News (CN AB)
Copyright: 2002 Alberta Newspaper Group, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.medicinehatnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1833
Author: Dr. Colin R. Mangham
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1704/a07.html?1610

COOPER ON TRACK WITH POT COLUMN

I would like to commend Dana Cooper's editorial on the Senate's ill-advised 
recommendation to legalize pot. For all the reasons he mentioned, the whole 
exercise was and is an embarrassing waste of taxpayer's dollars. The 
committee largely had its mind made up when it was formed in 2000.

I would warn us all that this is no pipe dream. If we don't want to see pot 
legalized with all that would bring for our children and children's 
children, then we need to be saying so loudly to our governments. There is 
a real lobbying effort going on and this scientifically, socially and 
ethically unfounded recommendation is being pushed by many of the public 
health elite in this country. They have systematically ignored or 
downplayed all the warnings and have gone instead with the vogue thinking 
that drug use is not only unavoidable but somehow normal. This is cop-out 
realism to the extreme.

Dr. Colin R. Mangham, Langley, B,C.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D