Pot health impact has not been studied

My compliments to the P.G. Citizen for Dr. Todd Whitcombe’s excellent Nov. 21 column (“Smoking pot hard on health”), describing the unreported potential consequences and the hundreds of unresolved components of this utopian project by the federal government. It is like announcing the opening of a 60-story high-rise building in seven months, before a single drawing has been completed.

Where is the building permit assuring the public of a necessary, functioning and safe building? Horst Sander Prince George in the United States, forcing some of the lowest paid employees of all to work a day that the more well to do have off.

As major retailers joust to open earlier than rivals, the most prominent of the big-box bullies has even moved to having openings on the morning of American Thanksgiving. Their workers are even cheated out of the traditional turkey dinner – but maybe this is as a kindness since what those folks are paid precludes having much of a feast.

All this is bad enough in the United States where at least there is a skimpy rationale for choosing that Friday for voracious consumerism. But the phenomenon is even more deplorable up here where Thanksgiving is six weeks in the past.

Canadians get so tediously nationalistic when they compare themselves to Americans, but then rush like lemming clones at the beck and call of greedy mainly U.S.-based retailers to spend like crazy on a day that they don’t even have off!

I urge Prince Georgians to have a real close look through the flyers and then shun the chains pushing Black Friday here, not only on that day, but right through the shopping year. Even better, heed the call of one major American outdoor retailer that has for years closed all stores the day after Thanksgiving and called on would-be buyers to “opt outdoors” instead. Norman Dale Prince George