Provincial leadership has gone to pot

Re Manitoba premier calls for delay in nation

wide marijuana legalization to 2019, July 19 The premiers of Canada are a pathetic lot. They get together and all they can do is derail the meeting and tell everyone they can’t even manage to get their act together to sell legal marijuana.

Did they forget that the federal government was elected by the people of Canada, and part of their platform was legalization of marijuana? Maybe they need to ask kids at the local high school how they handle marijuana distribution.

It’s a Conservative, of course, leading the charge that the sky is falling. Fifty years of waging war on pot is not good enough for them. Let’s keep locking up our kids and neighbours and tying up the courts.

Pot has been legal in many states south of the border and Alaska to the north. Have those states gone back to making pot illegal? Does the sun still shine in those states or has the sky fallen?

Maybe the premiers should be talking about a national prescription drug plan or a national dental plan. Maybe they could eliminate inter-provincial trade barriers. But I guess if they are declaring themselves so inept at pot distribution, what can we really expect. Where have all the real leaders gone? Stephen Woof, Haliburton Re Wynne to push new pharmacare plan, Cohn,

July 18 Martin Regg Cohn has eloquently described Ontario’s push for a national pharmacare plan as “arguing not only for social equity and decency, but fiscal efficiency and raw purchasing power.”

One can only hope that other provincial premiers will begin the process of getting a national, universal plan by emulating Ontario’s lead — a pharmacare program for people up to 25. A good start.

The arguments for a national plan have been made for years. Are we seeing a glimmer of political will to finally add pharmacare to our national health care? Bill Wensley, Cobourg