DECRIMINALIZING MARIJUANA USE WILL LOWER CRIME

Tullytown is to be congratulated for considering a wise, thoughtful and
merciful ordinance which will make it a safer community.

The editorial "Reduce Penalty for Pot? Time to Just Say No" (20 February)
is a mean spirited and vicious demand to stigmatize and destroy as many
young lives as possible.

It fails to point out that a criminal charge for simple pot possession now
disqualifies a young person from federal college financial aid, under a
cruel and foot-shooting federal regulation sponsored by Indiana Congressman
Mark Souder, who has vowed to penalize as many young people as possible.
Naturally the only people this regulation affects are poor.

The Tullytown Council, on advice of its Police Department, wishes to step
back from this shameful Festival of Cruelty in the same way Ann Arbor,
Michigan and Berkeley, California have chosen to do for decades -- treating
simple possession of marijuana as a sub-criminal matter with a fine.

Dealing with pot possession in this manner acknowledges the trivial and
non-threatening nature of the offense, and more important, frees limited
police resources to protect the community from far more serious crimes like
rape, crimes involving firearms, and major trafficking in life-threatening
and addictive hard drugs like heroin and cocaine.

Tullytown is to be congratulated for considering a wise, thoughtful and
merciful ordinance which will make it a safer community.

The Bucks County Courier Times should be ashamed of its puritanical
campaign of hysteria to stamp out sin by wasting police resources and
savaging the community's young people.

Robert Merkin
Northampton, MA Via the Internet