Pubdate: Mon, 25 Aug 2014
Source: Regina Leader-Post (CN SN)
Copyright: 2014 The Leader-Post Ltd.
Contact: http://www.leaderpost.com/opinion/letters/letters-to-the-editor.html
Website: http://www.leaderpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/361
Note: Guest Editorial from the Edmonton Journal

POT ISSUE GIVES CANADIANS MUCH TO MULL OVER

It's a good thing fumes from the debate about marijuana are not
toxic.

If they were, we'd surely have a whole new health crisis on our hands
14 months from now, considering the fog of secondhand smoke on the
issue that's going to fill the air between now and the federal
election next October.

The Canadian Medical Association's reaffirmation of the medical
dangers of smoking pot - and critics' inevitable rejoinders about the
evils of prohibition - give us all an excellent opportunity to prepare
ourselves for thoughtfully deciding where we stand on the issue and
why exactly we take this position.

No doubt, opponents of decriminalization will be heartened by the
doctors' insistence that the inhaling of any plant smoke has an
assortment of scientifically proven harmful impacts and that - on a
per-cigarette basis - marijuana is 10 times worse than tobacco.

After all, we live in a world increasingly horrified about and eager
for regulations to limit the impacts of alcohol and nicotine. How and
why could this trend to health-related regulation be bucked for pot
smokers?

However, the potential for health harms to the user or bystander is
hardly ever the only issue, or society's only concern, when it comes
to regulatory intervention by the state.

If it were, Prohibition would never have been repealed, tobacco would
be treated far more harshly than marijuana and there would be no
resistance to a host of modern healthrelated initiatives ranging from
bans on cellphone use in cars to vaccination of young girls against
sexually transmitted human papillomavirus.

In fact, concerns about morality and freedom invariably lurk just
under the surface of any argument about health risk and often they are
applied with great inconsistency. Depending on the biases we all
harbour, we may want government to butt out of marijuana, but impose
helmet laws for cyclists. Or we may want unregistered guns, but a ban
on abortions.

And almost always, there is the question of balance - whether
unintended side-effects will make the cure worse than the disease. The
fact is, even among the most laissez-faire of drug-legalizers, there
can be little doubt the CMA is right about the health impacts of
smoking marijuana.

What Canadians have to decide is how great are these risks, what the
chances are that legalization will make the use of marijuana more
widespread and lead to consumption of more dangerous narcotics, what
the impact might be on highway safety, how many impressionable young
lives could be spared the poison of incarceration by relaxed laws, how
much the illegal drug trade might be damaged by legalization and what
the long-term impacts might be on the economy.

And as we watch and learn from the relaxed pot laws in Washington and
Colorado, each of us needs to examine whether this particular health
risk is good ground for telling other people what to do and how to
live, compared with others in which we insist on the freedom to make
our own choices.

Edmonton Journal 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D