DECRIMINALIZE POT

Editor:

I have never tried even a spliff, but I find it sad there are leaders of
this country, which, in 1962, in a presentation as an independent nation
spoke of human rights and introduced the concept of a special year of human
rights being added to the world's calendar, who have failed to recognize
the whole marijuana issue has more to do with constitutional rights than
any other single factor.

We should be using the police policy of only arresting addicts when they
cause a public nuisance and violent behaviours. Addicts, who use drugs
which do not do harm to others but only to themselves, are no more harmful
than people who eat high-fat diets or people who parachute, stunt men or
women who climb mountains.

Decriminalize drugs and regulate it for adult use the same way as alcohol,
nicotine and caffeine.

You do not put adults in jail for making a nonviolent choice which does no
more harm than the choices people who do not use drugs make. America is
supposed to be a dynamic, free-market society but it will not allow the
black-market drugs to be regulated and sold in safe dosage.

This is corporate protectionism. We are taking away the rights of people to
protect corporate profits.

Hitler and the German people had the same mentality against other human
beings. They took away Jewish rights. They did not like the differences
which makes people what they are and that is human.

Joseph Leger
Kamloops