Pubdate: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 Source: Penticton Herald (CN BC) Copyright: 2013 The Okanagan Valley Group of Newspapers Contact: http://www.pentictonherald.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/664 THE REAL POT QUESTION Chronic stoners may see the Sensible BC "reeferendum" campaign and federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau's comments in Kelowna this week as further cause to waste their lives in a purple haze. But the real argument behind relaxation of marijuana laws is not about your right to get high, it's all about taking criminal gangs out of the equation and providing legal weed to medical patients whose conditions are helped by the drug. And taxation - lots and lots of it. Trudeau, somewhat surprisingly, revised his stance on marijuana while in the Okanagan. Was he smoking something perhaps? Where he was previously in favour of decriminalization of possession of small amounts of the drug, he's now in favour of full legalization. There's a big difference; one that widens the ideological divide between the Grits and Stephen Harper's law-and-order Tories. Advocates of the drive for a referendum on legalization in British Columbia liken the fight to that of the HST, in which a groundswell of public opinion forced the government's hand. Pot is so available in B.C. it is already widely accepted, even by people who don't partake. And getting some doctors to sign off on a medical marijuana prescription is so easy, it's laughable, we've been told. Which begs the real question: Are pot advocates really in it to get "medicine" for sick people? Or do they just want a card that makes it legal for them to get stoned whenever and wherever they want to? - - Managing Editor Jon Manchester - --- MAP posted-by: Matt