TASER LEGALITY ARGUED

Regarding last week's Front article entitled "New cop shocker." While they were busy getting in line to be zapped by the MUC Police's new Taser, none of the journalists present at the press conference gave a second thought to the fact that what the police were actually flaunting was their new prohibited weapon. Enabled by the Criminal Code of Canada, the Regulations Prescribing Certain Firearms and other Weapons, Components and Parts of Weapons, Accessories, Cartridge Magazines, Ammunition and Projectiles as Prohibited or Restricted state that: "As with restricted firearms, a Criminal Code regulation listing all the firearms previously prohibited by Order in Council came into effect December 1, 1998. "Those firearms are: Former Prohibited Weapons Order No. 3: Any firearm capable of discharging a dart or other object carrying an electrical current or substance, including the firearm of the design commonly known as the Taser Public Defender and any variant or modified version of it." So if you understand from this that the MUC police is preserving law and order with a weapon, the Taser, that is contrary to law and order, you read me right!

---Raynald Adams

POVERTY'S SAD

I sympathize with Marina Tidbury ("Suicide by poverty?" Letter, June 25) and agree that poverty can be the cause of suicide. And this cause is often ignored while analyzing this sad issue. In the U.S. Bill Clinton and the preceding government heavily cut back on welfare and social housing. The liberal Clinton even passed inhumane welfare laws pushing the poor off welfare automatically after a lifetime maximum of five years, never mind if they have young children to support or can't find work. The governments of both the U.S. and Canada cut back spending on social housing in a big way even during the supposed boom years. Rents, meanwhile, have soared almost everywhere. Mike Harris and Ralph Klein want to Americanize the whole country and chop most social programs further. The cost of post-secondary education has risen significantly too. Naturally, many poor people feel trapped in a web of despair. Add to that the removal from institutions of psychiatric patients, chronic loneliness in many functional people, drug addiction or alcoholism in many and an increasingly apathetic or cruelly judgmental society. You then have a perfect recipe for high suicide rates. Instead of judging the poor, one must preserve and improve social programs and treat affordable housing as a basic right, not a privilege. Do not judge the poor until you walk a mile in their shoes. If you wonder why so many people are seen talking to themselves in the metro or on the street, realize some of these people talk to themselves only because they think they are assured of having a sympathetic listener. And who knows? The next recession could transmogrify many dot-com millionaires into poor folks. Then the victims of "Sudden Poverty Syndrome" would understand.

--Manish Patwari

RESPONSIBLE LOGGING

This is concerning the article published Feb. 1 about the World Wildlife Fund making friends with Tembec, the logging corporation ["Turning a new leaf"]. Tembec's initiative must be applauded; it is a necessary step in establishing standards that would truly protect the environment and the public's interests as well. As a designer it is important for me to know the implications of the material choices I make. Tembec's willingness to provide wood from properly managed forests allows for better choices and standards for end products, and a better environment as well.

--Steve Michel