RE: THE UN V. SMART POT LAWS, EDITORIAL, SEPT. 30.

To hear it from Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office
for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, the Canadian Senate recommendation
to end marijuana prohibition undermines the fight against harder drugs.
When bloated drug war budgets are threatened, misinformation is the first
defence. Taxing and regulating marijuana would render the drug war
obsolete. As long as marijuana remains illegal and distributed by organized
crime, consumers will continue to come into contact with hard drugs like
cocaine and heroin. Naturally the career bureaucrats whose jobs depend on
never-ending drug war prefer to blame the plant itself for the alleged
"gateway" to hard drugs.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A., program officer, Drug Policy Alliance,
Washington, D.C.