POT PLANTATION AND POLICE RAIDS

Re "Pot Plantation Poses Big Risk for Authorities," Aug. 31: In forests all
over the state, there are sites identified almost reverentially as
bootleggers' encampments from the Prohibition era. Today we have whole
cities going unprotected while the entire police force is out in the woods
pulling up pot plants.

All of the environmental damage, booby traps, guns and threats to rangers
and innocent hikers are effects of the drug war, not justification for it.
When do we end our drug war?

Art Lyon
Bellflower

Lionel de Leon's Aug. 28 Voices essay, in which he advocates the
legalization of drugs, couldn't have been more timely.

The same edition had a story about a "narcotics raid." According to the El
Monte Police Department, even though they had "no evidence" that a house
contained drugs, they raided it anyway, killing a 65-year-old man in the
process.

This incident is the quintessential example of how the "war on drugs"
inspires a maniacal, zealot like mindset on the part of law enforcement in
a fruitless attempt to regulate drugs by establishing a prohibition of them.

Jack B. Pollack
Redondo Beach