Pubdate: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB) Copyright: 2009 Winnipeg Free Press Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/send_a_letter Website: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502 Author: Russell Barth Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n728/a07.html PROBLEMS WITH POT Re: Flin Flon pot operation moves (July 22). The pot grown by Prairie Plant Systems is ground up (which oxidizes it), full of seeds and stem (making it worse to smoke), zapped with gamma radiation (which kills half the medicine), and stinks of chemicals (because it wasn't grown properly). It doesn't even look like pot -- it looks like the stuff you sprinkle on the floor to soak up puke. It is already paid for with taxpayers' dollars, but these Health Canada clowns still have the gall to charge sick and dying people $5 a gram for this mulch. Leave it to the federal government to screw up something that even stoners can get right. Where are they going to grow their next crop? Next to the Chalk River nuclear plant? This is all by design. The government has set up an unconstitutional program to prop up an unconstitutional prohibition. The office is understaffed, doctors don't want to sign the forms because of the Health Canada fiasco. The office actually calls the doctor to discourage higher doses (practising medicine without a licence is apparently legal for government bureaucrats), and we are harassed by police and routinely discriminated against. We have to carry special papers with us to keep us out of jail because we have medical conditions! That is medical segregation! In Canada! In 2009! OK, so, it isn't apartheid or the Warsaw Ghetto, but big things like that start out as little things like this. The whole thing is a scandal of gun-registry proportions, but the media seem to think that it is just a few sick people who want to get high. No one comes to our defence as we are systematically discriminated against and stigmatized by our own government. Russell Barth Nepean, Ont. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr