Spend resources on serious issues, not pot
Re: “Happy that police enforcing the law”, (Citizen, March 17)
After reading Reed Elley’s letter to the Citizen, and a similar one in Times Colonist I had to reply.
Mr. Elley states that there is a growing amount of evidence to indicate it is harmful to our bodies. If that is the case then why has Health Canada approved a study on 30 children between the ages of one to 10 to test cannabis as a treatment for epilepsy? Perhaps Mr. Elley can explain to me why the U.S. government holds a patent (since 2003) on marijuana. Does Mr. Elley know that pet owners are using pot on their pets to alleviate pain? My wife is now on her third bout of cancer, and after her second surgery commenced ingesting medical marijuana for her cancer and has seen her tumor shrink after her last CT scan.
I started smoking pot in 1969 when I was 13 years old and did so for close to 35 years, and I polled a number of current pot smokers and ex pot smokers between 40 and 70 years of age what marijuana was a gateway to. It was unanimous — the munchies. And these were all gainfully employed people, business owners and retired people. Perhaps Mr. Elley should let Willie Nelson know it’s a gateway drug; he’s 80 and still smokes pot so he probably doesn’t have a lot of time to go through the gate.
It really bothers me when closed-minded people like him, the Times Colonist writer, and one of our councillors that commented on Facebook about something they have no knowledge on. Do these people even know why it is illegal? I suspect not.
I drank alcohol for 40 years and did much more harm to myself with this perfectly legal product.
I would like to see the municipality and the police spending their resources on more serious issues rather than disrupting dispensaries that are a service to people that can see and understand the benefits of medical marijuana.
D.S. Arsenault
Chemainus