LETTER

 Cannabis, alcohol and tobacco  

Several weeks ago, around October 17, the Bulletin published a number of letters about the legalization of cannabis. Many of them were hostile to the idea, although the debate time is long since past. I wonder where they were during that public discussion – and now they cry the sky is falling? 

One claimed he was not an alarmist but that this law will mean the decline of Canada and, probably, the Free World.  I suggest that the opponents who predict the worst should talk to their children and try smoking a little of the herb themselves, even if they smoked it once when they were in college. Give it a second try! Try it with your son or daughter!  They will see it is far from the disaster they expect. It is about as destructive as two beers.

Other opponents of cannabis are failing to recognize the costs to society of “legal” drugs like alcohol and tobacco.  If these people insist of reversing the law by voting for the Conservatives the next time, will they also insist that their party ban alcohol and tobacco? Why not? The social and medical costs of alcohol are so much more obvious and destructive than cannabis that their blindness to this shows they have an ideological complaint more than anything else. They don’t like the permissiveness and liberality which legalizing cannabis seems to promote.  Is that true?

Andy Black, 

Aylmer nord