Eileen Nattrass missed one key factor in her argument against pot (PNR, May 7) — facts.
If you want to make a legitimate argument in today’s Google-able world, you need clear cut facts. Not half truths copied and pasted from 1950s propaganda films.
She starts by attacking users as addicts, forgetting to mention the facts on Cannabis dependency [wikipedia], that “overall addiction potential for cannabis to be less than for caffeine, tobacco, and/or alcohol.”
She than segues into its detrimental effect on the lungs, forgetting to mention that pot users are restrained from purchasing anything but tobacco rolling papers (heavy in bleach and carcinogens), when there are alternatives available that are non-harmful [vaporizers] to the user, but these products are stigmatized as addict tools.
She mentions the increased health care costs, ignoring the facts, which show the opposite. Marijuana users, on average, are healthier than alcoholics and smokers.
Pot is illegal not because it’s bad like Reefer Madness improperly informed people. It was because one man decided his investment in paper was threatened by a newly invented machine that could process hemp. He lobbied to any industry affected and thus the marijuana tax act of 1937 was signed.
Noel Gagnon
Sidney