PRISON-POLICE-TREATMENT HAS UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES

Every major study of marijuana regulation has concluded that marijuana
prohibition would cause more problems than it solved and your July 27 issue
certainly showed why, describing how well the black market supplies
children with drugs and how much it is costing to double our prison
population by jailing petty drug offenders for long periods.

The numbers show plainly that the anti-drug prison-police-treatment
industry chooses victims because they appear to be weak or poor, with 70
percent of those convicted being non-white, while non-white users are only
about 15 percent of the problem.

Among the unexpected consequences of all this is the fact that Hispanics,
who may be the next numerical majority in our population, are being
assaulted by police at record rates.

Will the United States become an echo of South Africa, with a white
minority controlling a majority by the use of a heavily militarized police
force?

Polls consistently show that 60 percent to 70 percent of the people think
marijuana should be legalized and if we had a few more politicians as brave
as Jesse Ventura, we might make some real progress toward solving our drug
problem. However, it's also a fact that Hitler never had the support of
most of the Germans, and his police never had the firepower or super-snoop
abilities of modern American police, who are also able to make or break
politicians with their political war chests.

The people passed a medical-marijuana initiative, and now the police are
trying to sabotage it in Olympia. Nobody in the police-prison-treatment
industry wants the problem to end, and my guess is that things could get
worse before they get better.

Terry Scott, Belfair