Pubdate: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 Source: Penticton Herald (CN BC) Copyright: 2015 The Okanagan Valley Group of Newspapers Contact: http://www.pentictonherald.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/664 Author: Otto Sturhahn Page: A9 MAKE ALL DRUGS LEGAL Dear editor: Since legalizing pot is again on the agenda, I would like to say a few words in that regard. The groups that are against legalizing consist of lawyers, judges, law enforcement and the institutions that are housing the criminals in PPP jails. The latter would like to have the jails full, so that their investment pays off. On the other hand those that want to legalize marijuana would like a piece of the pie. These are pharmacy industry, medical professionals and of course the government. The latter has an appetite for cash like the cookie monster, so that they can pay the interest on the borrowed money. I belong to a third group that would like it if all drugs were decriminalized. I would like to see again poppies, pot plants and other hallucinating weeds in every front yard. When I was a child in school, my teacher taught me how to make opium from poppies. I even learned how to make black powder. At that time people decorated their front yard with sleeping weeds. People may remember that there was a time when alcohol was an enemy of mankind, a time of prohibition. We all know how that turned out, because those racketeers like Al Capone and many more made a fortune in home brewed whisky. These racketeers were the same characters which lobbied the government, to make alcohol illegal. If we would do some checking in that regard, we would notice that the same make a fortune with today's laws. When drugs were neither legal, nor illegal, there were no drug addicts anywhere. The trouble started right after it became illegal to have some fun. I can remember a story, where Ceres put opium in a child's cereal meal to help them sleep and recover from illness, because when one sleeps we are in the hands of the gods and they heal us overnight. Otto Sturhahn Penticton - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom