The Brantford Expositor May 6 2004
Letter to the Editor
by Trisha Haines (Brantford)

John Turmel
Marijuana is not for kids and drivers
I have to say that I was shocked last week to hear about the
weekend event that John Turmel had planned for Brantford.
How can any self-respecting adult promote the usage of
marijuana to young kids. It is disgusting that he planned to
go to our high schools and hand out flyers for kids to smoke
a doobie and to bring their parents with them. It is also
appalling that he thinks it is fine for children tan d
people who drive for a living to get high. I know as a
parent that this is something we try to prevent our children
from doing at an early age. Teenagers these days have enough
peer pressure pushing them to do things that they aren't
comfortable with. I think Turmel needs to find something
productive to do with his time.

JCT: Also, two days later:

The Brantford Expositor
Saturday May 8 2004
Letter to the Editor
by Sarah Hall (Brantford)

Pot promoter has some bad ideas

This is in response to Trisha Haines' May 6th letter about
marijuana, "Marijuana is not for kids and drivers." I
absolutely agree with the points she made.

When I heard about John Turmel's plans last weekend, I was
rather shocked myself.

While I consider myself open-minded and accepting of other
people's beliefs, I certainly don't think that encouraging
children to start smoking pot is right, not just from the
moral perspective, which I'm sure most people are looking at
in this situation, but also from the perspective that
children are impressionable and are easy to target.

We certainly don't encourage our children to start drinking
alcohol at an early age and, as far as I'm concerned,
marijuana is no more an evil than the drink. If anything,
it's a lesser evil, even if people do consider it a
dangerous gateway drug.

When, and if, marijuana becomes decriminalized or legalized,
a great deal of effort should be put into educating people,
especially children, about the reality of marijuana, not all
the propaganda that the government has fed us since the
1930s in the days of Reefer Madness.

I firmly believe that knowledge is power and if children are
made to understand that smoking a joint is vastly different
from, say, snorting a line of cocaine, then we can perhaps
avoid this gateway phenomenon.

Obviously, we in Canada, and other parts of the world, are
agree that there are benefits to marijuana use or else we
wouldn't allow certain people the legal right to use it.

And, as far as encouraging drivers to smoke pot goes, I
think it's a foolish request on Turmel's part. Using alcohol
as a comparison again, marijuana impairs judgment and
reaction time. Just as you shouldn't drive drunk, you
shouldn't drive high.

Also, the decriminalization of marijuana is not likely to
occur without the police having the right to demand samples
from drivers they suspect to be under the influence of
marijuana, just like the breathalyser test.

If Turmel is as determined as he seems to be to help
marijuana become legalized, he's only damaging his campaign
by encouraging stoned driving.

Of course, he's entitled to his opinion but I think that the
best way to approach the subject of legalizing marijuana is
from a responsible, mature point of view. Not every
marijuana user is a criminal with no morals.

JCT: Alcoholics too.

I know there will be plenty of people who will disagree with
what I've said here, and with what I'm about to say, but I
feel the need to say it. There are good and bad points to
marijuana. No one side is right. We know that it isn't good
for your lungs and brain cells. We know it impairs judgment.
We know it causes lack of motivation.

But we also know that there are people who benefit greatly
from marijuana use. It's a painkiller, an appetite
stimulator, a sedative. And the government could certainly
benefit as well by controlling the sale of marijuana. These
things have to matter to some degree.

There are many obstacles to overcome before marijuana is
legalized. I feel that as an intelligent society that
claims to be accepting, we should be able to overcome these
obstacles.

But John Turmel is going about it the wrong way and
encouraging the wrong things.

JCT: There's a difference between recommending that people
drive high which I didn't say and not deterring from people
smoking high when it has no effect on motor skills or
accident rates.

I'll send my response to the Expositor in my next post.


--
Abolitionist Slave Leader John C."The Banking Systems Engineer" Turmel
for UNILETS interest-free time-based currency in U.N. resolution C6
to Governments in the http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration.htm
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel 519-753-0645 USENET: can.politics