To the editor:
Re: Pot laws not about all or nothing," No. 15.
Matthew Claxton's column was adequate for the most part. Legalization or decriminalization of cannabis has been urgently needed for at least 50 years. Perhaps a tipping point has arrived, and the next provincial and federal elections may finally bring changes, which should have occurred 40 years ago when the Le Dain Commission concluded. Countless lives and billions of dollars would have been saved, and should be, starting now, however long overdue.
Your musings on various economic and personal transformations, which may accompany this legal rectification are of some interest, but I must object to the citation of a Langley miscreant's dastardly deed as basis for your unseemly confession that "It's hard to imagine a rage-filled killer fitting in well at a chamber of commerce meeting."
Please retract this uncalled-for slur on cannabis growers and rethink your presumptive attribution of nonviolence to commercial business operators, both of which views are prejudiced and contrary to impartial observation. For example, even odious murderous gangsters own and operate more "legitimate" businesses than they do grow-ops. General populations of business people and of cannabis producers are likely to have similar proportions of killers among them, of both the rage-filled and dispassionate varieties.
I sympathize with you for your difficulties with imagination. Perhaps a medicinal brownie or illicit toke could provide a remedial alleviation of your condition. Bring it all back home and open your ears to a 47-year-old song, "Tombstone Blues": "The ghost of Belle Starr she hands down her wits/To Jezebel the nun who violently knits/A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits/ At the head of the chamber of commerce."
Ch'an Bodhi Cede, Vancouver
