IMPERFECT SOLUTION BEATS NONE

The Daily News comes out against legalizing hemp/marijuana
("Proposition 5," Oct. 18). All sides say the initiative is
"imperfect." So what? Some would say the Civil War was an "imperfect"
solution to slavery. Would we still be waiting for relief from
injustice if the Daily News was in charge? If we were in some
backwards state, would the Daily News keep homosexuals in prison
waiting for a perfect solution? We just sent another $1.3 billion in
drug war money to Columbia so those people could continue killing each
other on our behalf. That's what I call imperfect.

It's a slippery slope from disapproving of someone's use of marijuana
to putting that person in prison when they don't do what you want them
to do. Most of these people have hurt no one and are political
prisoners of the drug war. Hemp/marijuana should be relegalized as it
was prior to the temperance movement that gave us that other peculiar
notion, prohibition.

Your editorial asks, "If drug felonies can be quashed by initiative,
why not other crimes?" I hope so. Any victimless crime or injustice
should be "quashed" by whatever means possible; or is the Daily News
suggesting that the ignorant citizens will take leave of their senses
and let murderers out of prison to run wild in the streets?

John Recktenwald,
Anchorage