The provincial press has been having a field day with the use of Oxycontin on Cape Breton Island. I never heard of Oxycontin until it began making headlines a few months ago as "hillbilly heroin," the drug of choice among Cape Breton addicts, spawning robberies, burglaries and a street drug economy to rival Columbia, or at least British Columbia.

What I learned from the newspapers is that Oxycontin, a powerful painkiller used in the treatment of terminally ill cancer patients, is prescribed by more doctors in Cape Breton than anywhere else in Nova Scotia. What I didn't learn from the same news stories, but know from other sources, is that Cape Breton has the highest rate of cancer in Canada, so the newspaper stories didn't leave me with the impression that doctors in Cape Breton are co-conspirators in this illegal trade. Other readers, unaware of the medical facts, may have drawn different conclusions from the references to doctors, prescriptions and street drug popularity.

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Who would have thought that the Canadian Senate would come forward with such a radical and controversial report on the use of marijuana in Canada?

It may have been a red-letter day for pot smokers when the senate suggested that our legislators move towards decriminalizing and legalizing grass, but it was also a wake-up call for the rest of Canadians who were ambivalent to pot over the past two decades.

Our society has come a long way from the days when pot was seen as an evil drug causing insane behaviour in those who used it. But for many of the older generation it is still lumped in the category of an evil drug, the same as heroin, cocaine, LSD or a host of pharmaceutical drugs that mess with your body and mind.

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