Pubdate: Sun, 23 Feb 2014
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.theprovince.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Peggy Jones
Page: A29

PEOPLE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GROW POT LIKE VEGETABLES

What does it mean that medical marijuana patients are suing the
government and why should you care since you're not a patient? Well,
imagine this:

Imagine the government told you that, starting next month, you could
no longer pick the apples off the tree in your front yard. That if you
harvest the cherries or plums or peaches in the back yard or eat the
strawberries and blueberries and raspberries in your garden or a local
park, you will go to jail. Instead of being able to plant seeds, the
government is now forcing you to purchase all of your nutritional
needs from their large-scale authorized commercial production facilities.

Even if you have sufficient financial resources to make the purchases,
you might chafe at being told you can only have store-bought tomatoes.
You might recognize the enhanced flavour and documented nutritional
benefits of home grown fruits and vegetables. You might find gardening
therapeutic or consider it spiritually enriching; connecting you to
nature's generous abundance.

And what if you didn't have the financial capacity to purchase all you
used to receive from your garden? Do you starve, compromise your
health or go to jail?

If this seems far-fetched and preposterous to you, consider this: The
federal government just told 40,000 licensed medical marijuana
patients that they can no longer grow their own plant medicine and
must buy it from authorized commercial production facilities or go to
jail. Many will be unable to afford the commercially produced
medicine, which is expected to cost three to 10 times as much.

Medical marijuana patients may seem like a special-interest group. But
not only is a society's greatness measured by how it treats its
weakest members, that treatment is probably a good indication of how
it will soon treat the rest. For either reason, now is the time to
tell the government it does not have the right to force you to buy
what could and should be free.

Peggy Jones, Victoria
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MAP posted-by: Matt