EVANS' LETTER 'FOLLY'

Dear Editor:

Re: Letter to the Editor, Grow Ops Getting Out Of Hand, Sept. 6, 2006.

One only has to look south to see the folly of more police funding as
a solution to clandestine cannabis growing operations. The U.S.,
according to the RCMP, is its own biggest supplier of cannabis
despite huge police budgets and prisons overflowing with non-violent offenders.

The only way to reduce the numbers of grow operations is to legalize
and regulate cannabis along the lines suggested by the Senate Report
in 2002 on Cannabis. It would not be profitable to fill
million-dollar homes with a plant currently wildly overinflated due
to public policy.

Mr. Evans is advocating a solution that has been tried and is failing
miserably. Surely police have more pressing problems than a non-toxic
plant? I would much rather they hire more police to solve their
backlogs of actual crimes, find some missing children, stop some
pedophiles and solve some murders, rather than waste more money on
failed policies that amount to little more than job security for
police chasing plants.

Interdicting the supply would not stop cannabis production but it
would raise the value more. I have to oppose anyone who supposes
chasing plants has a higher priority than protecting the public from
truly dangerous people. Too bad that is the government, the police
unions and misinformed city councillors.

Colin Walker, New Westminster