Letters and comments, Jan. 11

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/01/2017 (3199 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cannabis and cars

Re: Thoughts on pot (Letters, Jan. 5)

Letter-writer James Teller misinterpreted statistics from Washington state on cannabis and driving.

The cited report states “results of this study do not indicate that drivers with detectable THC in their blood at the time of the crash were necessarily impaired by THC or that they were at fault for the crash; the data available cannot be used to assess whether a given driver was actually impaired, and examination of fault in individual crashes was beyond the scope of this study.”

The report also states, “It was not clear whether this increasing trend was attributable to Initiative 502 or to other factors that were beyond the scope of the study.”

It is worth noting our police officers lack a roadside screening device and legally established blood concentrations for a medicine cabinet full of impairing substances, including analgesics, cold remedies, sedatives, sleep aids and Marinol (Dronabinol), the legal synthetic THC pill.

Cannabis consumers tend to overestimate their level of impairment and either refrain from driving or attempt to compensate for perceived impairment by driving more slowly and defensively. The exact opposite is true of alcohol.

Cannabis usage rates rise and fall with no statistical relationship to cannabis laws and their enforcement, so there is no reason to assume cannabis usage rates will rise after legalization, nor any reason to assume cannabis-impaired driving will go up. There has been no significant increase in cannabis-use rates in Washington state.

Far from being a “gateway” to other drugs, cannabis is an economic substitute for alcohol and other more impairing substances, such that when cannabis use goes up, drinking and other drug use go down, along with drug-related traffic collisions.

Indeed, traffic crashes have been steadily declining in Washington state.

 

Matthew M. Elrod

Victoria

Get family law out of courts

Re: Child-safety cases top priority: chief justice (Jan. 6)

Chief Justice Glenn Joyal states the court has often been operating out of a desire to see families reunited and has been willing to wait for the parties involved to take necessary steps in that direction before coming to a decision.

He says if that’s the approach we are taking then we’re acting as social workers, and that’s not our function.

He hopes the government will work to establish an administrative system separate from the courts that could deal with child-protection hearings.

There are other areas of family law that should be taken out of the court system. Over 18 years ago, William Eddy, a therapist and family law attorney, stated in his article, How personality disorders drive family court litigation, that people with personality disorders view relationships from a rigid and adversarial perspective, and, inevitably, a large number end up in the adversarial process of court.

Because more cost-conscious people nowadays are resolving their divorces in mediation, lawyer-assisted negotiation or just by themselves, those cases remaining in litigation may be increasingly driven by personality disorders. In highly contested cases, counselling or consequences should be ordered. Professionals and parties must work together to fully diagnose and treat each person’s underlying problems rather than allowing parties (and their advocates) to become absorbed in an endless adversarial process. Because their largest issues are internal, they will never be resolved in court.

Just as Chief Justice Joyal states the courts should not act as social workers, the courts should also not act as mental-health specialists.

As therapist and family law lawyer William Eddy stated, these cases will never be resolved in court.

 

Dolores Belot

Winnipeg

Better bun-warmers for bus shacks

I am writing in regard to the “heated” bus shelters in our city. As every citizen of Winnipeg is well aware, the frigid temperatures lately are a challenge to deal with. This is very apparent for those of us who use Winnipeg Transit.

I have noticed over the past two winters the bus shelters are not being heated to the extent they were in previous winters. It used to be that bus commuters would have some reprieve from the cold as they waited. The metal seats in the shelter were toasty-warm and were a godsend when temperatures were like they are now.

Unfortunately, these days the metal seats are too cold to sit on, and the shelter just gets you out of the wind. I have spoken to 311 and was told the decision was made to only heat the shelter enough to keep the glass clear of frost.

I have heard from others it was done to keep the homeless from sleeping in the bus shelters. A sad situation for the homeless and transit customers, as well.

Surely there is a better solution.

Considering the money being spent on rapid transit, there should be a relocation of funds that would allow for heated shelters during the winter.

 

Lois Taylor

Winnipeg

 

Dauphin project doesn’t apply now

Re: Look at success of Mincome (Letters, Jan. 6)

Keith Bradley is wrong to claim the Dauphin experiment was a success. No analysis of the program was conducted. No followup work was done. No conclusions were reached.

The Dauphin project was a joint federal-provincial venture, not a Trudeau initiative. One researcher has recently expressed an opinion Dauphin residents had fewer health-care concerns than a comparable control group. The Dauphin project was about improving economic well-being, not healthy living.

In 1974-78, Dauphin had a population of about 2,238 or 0.2 per cent of a provincial population of 1,148,401. There were numerous factors that made Dauphin stand out as unique in the province.

In 1976, only 30 per cent of Manitoba’s population lived in rural areas. Nationally, the rural population was 24 per cent. In the 40 years since, there has been a 54 per cent increase in Canada’s population and a reduction to 16 per cent rural residents.

The demographics of Dauphin in 1976 are vastly different from the demographics of Manitoba and Canada in 2016. Touting the inconclusive and undocumented Dauphin experience as a solution to 2017 poverty problems is irrational and irresponsible.

 

John Feldsted

Winnipeg

 

Planes, places and Pallister

Re: Can you hear him now? (Jan. 6)

Can we please let this go? We knew Brian Pallister was a millionaire when we didn’t vote for the NDP in the last election.

We knew he had a six-car garage, $2-million home on Wellington Crescent. We knew he had spent more than 200 days in opposition at one of the three Costa Rica properties he owns through a corporation he set up down there to pay his taxes, possibly wages for staff and to purchase things such as vehicles for when he leaves the rest of us behind in the cold with the daily problems this province faces. And we knew he wasn’t one of us or just a “regular Joe.”

But what he doesn’t seem to realize is we didn’t vote him in, or his Progressive Conservative government, in the last election; we voted the NDP government out, and our anger and outrage with the former government fades faster and faster with the anger and outrage the current government earns with every display of their true colours.

 

Brian Spencler

Winnipeg