I AM appalled at the police association for condemning the
decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana. The majority of
parents don't want their children shackled with a criminal conviction
for experimenting with relatively harmless pot. Those children, if
caught, won't have the chance to become police officers or MPs, while
the ones lucky enough to avoid the law will.

Meanwhile, the police spend kilos of cash scaring young people into
coughing up the next pot user or seller in line - very rarely a drug
baron. I can appreciate the police wanting to protect their jobs and
funding, but at the expense of our children? I don't think so! So
let's allow our kids to grow up after this experimentation stage -
just like you and I did - to become a police officers or politicians
or anything else they want to become, without a criminal record.

Stephen John VandeKemp,
Bradford