To the editor:

It surprised me that your Sunday Life section June 27 managed to
devote two pages to surviving AIDS without once mentioning cannabis.

I once spoke with a staffer at the AIDS Coalition of Nova Scotia, and
that individual stated that he didn't know a single AIDS patient,
himself included, who had not at least tried cannabis to counter
weight loss and nausea, and to date he had not heard anything but
positive reports about its effectiveness compared with other extremely
expensive medicines.

As police in Canada are obliged to unselectively enforce our country's
latest entrenchment of prohibition, formerly Bill C8, did the AIDS
survivors you interviewed fear to speak on the issue, or did you just
not have the guts to ask?

It is such under-reporting of medical issues related to cannabis,
complemented by the over-reporting of any criminal issue associated
with the herb, that allowed Bill C8 to pass in the first place. Now
AIDS, cancer, MS, and chronic pain patients can be thrown in jail for
daring to speak the truth about medicine that allows them to live,
unless the police choose to enforce the law selectively.

Any law that must be enforced selectively is a bad law. As the editor
of the New England Journal of Medicine put it, it is "callous and
inhumane" for the government to apply criminal sanctions on patients
who use cannabis. As long as the media fear to speak the truth, such
bad laws will be with us for a long time.

Chris Donald
Halifax
Via the Internet