I somewhat agree with Joe McLaughlin (Advocate, Saturday, Feb. 18) on the principle of his article about legalizing marijuana but I don’t think in actuality that this will work.
What strength of marijuana will be licensed? What age will a person have to be to buy licensed marijuana? What quantity of marijuana will a person be able to purchase at one time? Is there going to be a record of purchases?
Suggesting that the marijuana will be cheaper will get more young people buying these drugs just to try it out and then get hooked on them.
If the drugs are cheaper, then the buyers will become dealers for the younger ones to buy these drugs from, and the new dealers who will buy large quantities of drugs for resale to the younger users. These dealers don’t care how young a person is as long as they can pay for the drugs.
Finally with all this in place, a stronger marijuana will be developed by the black market that isn’t licensed and the ones who can afford it will be buying the stronger drugs from the old dealers and the viscous circle will continue.
Now we have a drug war that we ourselves started and we haven’t accomplished anything but created another bureaucracy and spent a lot of money in doing so.
This is just marijuana — there are dozens of different drugs out there for addicts.
Today I heard on the news that 50 per cent of the native people on reserves are addicted to OxyContin so you can see that addicts that are looking for a bigger high are using stronger drugs.
What about a driver on a road trip on his third or fourth joint, is he/she still capable of driving safely? The benefits from taxes will soon be overpowered by the costs to families, accidents and medical/hospital services.
Keep marijuana of the streets and limit the supply for medicinal purposes only, as prescribed by a licensed doctor.
I would like to see a lot more opinions on McLauglin’s and my letters and get a better feel of what the general public thinks and especially what parents, in particular, think.
I don’t know if McLauglin’s ideas will work or not and it may be worth a try even if I don’t think it will work.
E.T. (Tom) Skoreyko
Red Deer