EspañolIn response to “Seeing Through Canada’s Anti-Marijuana Campaign” (December 1, 2014) by Andrew Woodbury.

As someone who has been a vocal public advocate for the complete and full legalization of marijuana for 12 years, I can only applaud the government’s tack on the this new anti-marijuana ad campaign.

People under the age of 18 have more tech savvy than the clowns who designed this campaign, so they will cross reference and see hundreds of sites showing how marijuana actually cures people’s cancer (like CBC’s Alan Park), and how it is even good for you when you smoke it.

Like the DARE campaign that we all scoffed at as teens in the 1980s, this campaign is balderdash, and teens these days have hard science at their fingertips to prove this ad campaign wrong. They will resent being lied to, resent that money is being spent on this nonsense rather than better education and health care and job opportunities, and then join our ranks in the Canadian marijuana-legalization movement.

Our side could never drum up this much publicity, so on behalf of every “pot activist” in Canada, I would like to offer the government our deepest gratitude for doing it for us. And since apologists feel free to refer to me — who got out of a wheelchair and beat alcoholism — my epileptic wife, and millions of other Canadians as “dopes,” I see no reason not to suggest that they may want pot to remain illegal because they or someone they know wants to keep making a fat profit off prohibition.

Russell Barth

Writer, artist, animator, activist

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada