Source: The Lethbridge Herald Pubdate: Friday, 6 Feb 1998 Contact: http://www.lis.ab.ca/lherald/ REAL MARIJUANA CULPRITS ARE THE LAWS OF THE LAND Editor: I should like to respond to your young correspondent Erica Street, (Letters, Feb.3) who urges us to continue to punish marijuana users in order to prevent "many disastrous consequences that the country is not prepared to face." Dear Erica: I commend you for participating in this most important debate. I understand your position. Here's what I think about laws that declare certain drugs to be illegal. The prohibition of certain drugs is only the latest manifestation of man's enduring propensity to look down upon, to despise, to hate an identifiable minority of innocent individuals. There is no more moral or medical or scientific reason to persecute the users of certain drugs than there was in the past to burn witches a at the stake, lynch blacks or gas Jews. Just as Hitler's propaganda conviced many Germans that Jews were a menace to society, so too has the Canadian government's unrelenting stream of anti-drug propaganda convinced you that drug users must be punished. Drug prohibition is an abuse of our human right, as adults, to ingest any damn substance we please. In any event, prohibition has always failed. If drugs are available in our prisons, how can the police prevent them from being available everywhere? Unfortunately,government propaganda has convinced many otherwise intelligent Canadians to support drug prohibition, thereby condemning us to re-learn the terrible lessons of alchohol prohibition- organized crime, thousands of poisoned users, jammed courts and prisons and a corrupted justice system- all over again. To paraphrase Hegel, We learn from history that we do not lean from history". Please visit your local library to find out the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. Alan Randell, Victoria, B.C. - ---- TOO MANY YOUNG PEOPLE END UP WITH RECORDS Editor: Unfortunately, Erica Street doesn't seem to realize the disastrous effect on the lives of many young people who become saddled with a permanent criminal record because of marijuana convictions. Since the 1960's, over 600,000 Canadians have been convicted of simple possession, the majority of those being under 30. Although cannabis use is not harmless, scientists at the Addiction Research Foundation say it is much safer than alcohol and tobacco, and ARF director Perry Kendall feels that prohibition is causing far more problems than it solves. He also feels that the "just say no" approach is simplistic and ineffective, drawing the comparison of sex education classes. Teachers don't advise "don't do it, end of story." Instead they say, "Look, if you are going to do it, at least do it responsibly; here are some guidelines" Ms Street demonstrates another serious failing of Canada's current policies when she mentions "public service announcements, telling me drugs are bad." Such simplistic messages can lead young people to experiment with more serious drugs once they discovered marijuana isn't as harmful as they'd been led to believe. A British teen recently told the BBC, "Before I tried cannabis, I thought it was classed as a bad drug, on a level of other drugs such as heroin. After I tasted cannabis and saw there wasn't a problem with it, I thought speed will be OK." Despite the billions of dollars spent to exterminate marijuana, it is as widely available as ever, even in our schoolyards. It is time Canadians treat marijuana use as a public health issue and legalize its possession and distribution while imposing regulations governing age limits, driving and taxation. Government should play the role of the safe sex educator. If so many of us are going to do it anyway, help us do it responsibly; develop some rational guidelines. Chris Clay, Sechelt, BC. - ---- DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR FROM AUTHORITY Editor: I wonder whether Erica believes what she learned in her science classes. I am sure that she learned that science is the name given to the system that describes how we know what we know, and simplicity, or the principle of economy, Ockham's Razor, is the key to this process of knowing. Science is, basically, hypothesis testing; students must not be given the idea that it is a method of shoring up one's previous beliefs, of confirming one's biases. Professor Colin Groves of the Australian National University says: "More than that, hypothesis testing demands humility: the willingness to admit that one may be wrong." Fundamentalist religion and idealogues of all stripes teach the very opposite: the terrible certainty that one point of view is right. To teach that to children, that is not education. Is Erica going to go through life believing everything people in positions of authority tell her? I hope not. Science, and progress, would be at a standstill if young people grew up like that. Pat Dolan, Vancouver - --- OUR OPINION: LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE ETHER ....our mailbag continues to swell in the first post-Christmas rush of correspondence. Included on the page are three letters sent by e-mail.All from the west coast, are responding to a previous letter written by a southern Albertan. The writers saw the original letter on our Web page. ......A Southern Alberta high school student professes her views on drugs in a daily newspaper and, several hundred miles distant, far from the newspaper's circulation area, knocks a hornet's nest from a tree in British Columbia. ....it still amazes those of us who used to dictate our stories to Canadian press with a telephone critched in our neck...... e-mail and the Web are pretty much commonplace now, one wonders what new sorcery awaits.