POT LUCK

Dear Editor:

Re: "Two charged in Niagara Falls pot raid," The News, Oct. 7 edition.

According to the story, "Eight pounds of marijuana worth $120,000 seized."

I hope for your sake that this is a typo because if cannabis sells
for $15,000 a pound in Niagara Falls you are about to be flooded with
dealers once word gets out that pot is worth 50 per cent more than gold.

Gold closed recently at $576.20 U.S. per ounce. There are 16 ounces
in a pound, which puts the price of gold at $9,219.20 U.S. per pound.
That is $10,353.16 in Canadian funds at today's exchange rate.

My bet is on this not being a typo, but rather a grossly exaggerated
figure handed to you by the police in an effort to inflate the value
of this bust, which helps justify increased police pressure on
cannabis, and increased police budgets. If this is the case, maybe in
the future your reporters might want to actually check their facts
before printing them, or at a minimum, punch the numbers into a
calculator first.

This is not unbiased journalism. Printing right-wing propaganda like
this makes you part of the problem in this ridiculous, and failed,
70-year-old war against unpatentable drugs without pharmaceutical
industry labels.

Derek Telasco

Harrow, Ontario