Editor:
Re: Pot laws need adjusting, April 3 column.
Canadian Medical Cannabis Partners are encouraged by columnist Frank Bucholtz’s acknowledgment that the right platform for medical-cannabis regulation is the provincial government and that municipalities need to engage the provinces to make this happen.
After our five years of forward motion in this direction, it is so disheartening to hear our premier revert to the old rhetoric “federal jurisdiction.”
If she won’t listen to patients, maybe she will listen to the municipalities who are also major stakeholders.
With regards to the Surrey fire chief’s report filled with innuendos, the only relationship between the criminal element and those with health issues that use cannabis as their medicine is the relationship the media and politicians create so they can support a misguided agenda of profiteering, now becoming legal profiteering on the backs of our sickest and weakest.
Yes, there are there people who misuse the system for profit. According to RCMP 2010 reports, that number is 70. That does not justify throwing under the bus the 39,930-plus law-abiding patients using their cannabis for their personal medical conditions.
It is time the province accepts responsibility and begins the process of developing a provincial strategy so that we can truly get the criminal element out of the marijuana business and allow patients their dignity to access.
The federal Conservatives program will cause an increase to criminal activity, less “safe communities” and more harm to legitimate folks with health issues.
In 2010, there were 106,000 deaths by pharmaceuticals and zero deaths by cannabis. It is time for the media to report truth and support life.
Joy Davies, White Rock
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Some simple research of Health Canada figures for B.C. compared and aligned against statistics from the BC Coroners Service makes interesting reading and puts the truth out there.
We are being systematically misled by journalists and fire chiefs, whom I suspect have either failed to properly research this matter, are failing to do their professional duty or, potentially, have other agendas.
The figures reveal that while personal-use production licenses (PUPLs) in B.C. increased sixfold in the five-year period 2007-2011, during that same period the number of fatalities in fires fell by more than 30 per cent.
However, the hyperbole and frequent reference to claims that fire risks are 24-times higher for patients growing cannabis is little more than shameful.
Furthermore, if the ratio of fatalities to PUPLs in 2007 had continued, the number of fatalities would have risen from 33 to 212 – when it actually fell to just 20.
As well, if ‘experts’ could cite references for the marijuana mould catastrophe that is presumably causing mass hospitalizations and sickness, their opinions might carry some weight with the people of B.C.
I suspect no such catastrophic situation exists.
David Hutchinson, Surrey
