Pubdate: Thur, 09 Sept 1999
Source: Edmonton Sun (Canada)
Copyright: 1999, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonSun/
Forum: http://www.canoe.ca/Chat/home.html
Author: L Doerr

Note: Parenthetical remark by the Sun editor; headline by newshawk

There. You've said it. The Edmonton Sun does not support legalization
of marijuana. Yet it is obvious you do support the privatization of
liquor sales and basically whatever else this current government
legislates. Yes, Audrey Jensen is a fanatic but she consistently
provides statistics that even you cannot rebuff. Alcohol has proven
itself to be a killer drug. Has marijuana?

Let me tell you what has happened in my neighbourhood since a liquor
store opened half a block from my home this summer. Two weekends ago,
it was broken into and robbed. I walk out to my car in the morning to
sometimes find empty bottles and beer cans strewn all over. I even
came out one morning to go to work and found a drunk woman staggering
around the alley.

My eight-year-old daughter asked me one day, "Now that we have a
liquor store here, will there be more robbers around our house?" She
is highly intelligent and I refused to lie to her, so I had to answer
yes, I guess so. Maybe if more people lit up instead of sucking back,
it would be a less violent and nasty world.

L. Doerr

(Two wrongs don't make a right.) 

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