Your columnist, Claire Hoy, would, perhaps, write a more credible column if he avoided demonising proponents of Insite. One does not make believeable points by demeaning one's ideological opponents. Using terms like wingnut, ridiculous, junkies, and Neanderthals, tends to undermine journalistic credibility, while excessive use of sarcasm-laden quotation marked words makes the grammar Nazis in his readership tremble with indignation and frustration. Mr. Hoy should kindly try to make his journalistic points with proper research and intelligent debate, and leave namecalling and rabble-rousing to her political masters. "Greyhavens" [end]
Dear editor, Re: Supreme Court barking up the wrong tree, May 9 As a veteran of the Canadian Forces and a retired member of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, it pains me to read the amount of criticism that the Supreme Court of Canada is receiving from the enforcement lobby and from moralist MPs like Mr. Thompson. I can understand, but do not condone, the enforcement lobby in their efforts to build a greater empire and to garner budgetary dollars, but I cannot accept a Member of Parliament criticising the SCC, who are doing an increasingly difficult job in keeping Canada from becoming a fascist prison-state, with our mores dictated by narrow-viewed paternalists like the good Mr. Thompson. [continues 85 words]
The following letters were received in response to The Sun's four editorials about marijuana last week. Thank you for a most intelligent and reasoned series of articles about the history and future of cannabis prohibition. It is seldom that one sees newspaper articles of this sort that do not echo the frightening mandatory minimum sentencing, greater enforcement budget and liberal judiciary song that is chanted by our neighbours who run the gulag to the south. When Canadians who choose to ingest cannabis have the right to do in the privacy of their own homes, and the right to grow their own supply, without fear of doors being broken down, fines and possible incarceration, then we can turn our attention to the problem of reducing the empowerment of triads, gangs and for-profit grow-ops that is engendered by prohibition. James D. Fanning Head of Jeddore, N.S. [end]
As a retired member of Canada's Foreign Service, I am concerned at the recent interference by the American ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, in the domestic and international policy decisions of Canada. I am referring to the chiding given us when we refused to join the attack on Iraq, based on Iraq's possession of the chimerical "weapons of mass destruction," and more recently, to the threats of sanctions and border difficulties should we pursue our plan to decriminalize cannabis. [continues 186 words]
