The social and medical ravages of alcohol are legion. Why then is B.C. allowing alcohol to be more easily procured by allowing its sale in grocery stores?
Alcohol’s moderate use in a social setting is not a bad thing and, medically, alcohol may have some benefit in lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, gallstones, the common cold and diabetes, while increasing libido and life expectancy.
However, in 2011 there were approximately 20,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths due to alcohol events. The province spends far more on alcohol-related health care, law enforcement and insurance claims, than it earns from all alcohol sales – millions more. And we, the taxpayers, foot the bill.
At the same time the government is limiting availability to the medical use of marijuana, far more beneficial with far fewer toxic and lethal effects than alcohol.
Ingesting marijuana, as opposed to smoking it, boasts long-term, clinically proven benefits in the treatment of arthritis, cancer, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, glaucoma, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, epilepsy, ADHA and PTSD, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, fibromyalgia, migraine headaches and depression. But the pharmaceutical profits are zero, so follow the money and you come crashing into government intervention.
The proposed banning of the right to home-grow pot for personal relief of a medical condition is creating barriers for its legitimate use. Pot is a substitute for the illegal use of opiates like Oxycontin but it also challenges the validity of traditional therapies promoted by the drug corporations and endorsed by corrupt health watchdogs.
One can produce any amount of home-made beer and wine for personal use, but grow one cannabis plant without a licence and one becomes a hardened criminal. The Union of British Columbia Municipalities at its last convention voted unanimously to decriminalize marijuana. Why not?
Not one death has been attributed to marijuana. When are we going to get it right?”
Edgar Murdoch
