LIBERALS ARE READY TO LEGALIZE POT

Editor:

Jack Layton missed a golden opportunity to embrace the use of pot by
the NDP candidates that landed them in pot water.

Legalized pot as a platform plank will energize millions of voters. I
have neighbours who fall into a couple of categories - either they
have illegal grow-ops, or they make their own wine and beer as a
hobby. Fields of hops and vineyards are compatible crops in our area
only because society has moved away from prohibition and restrictions
on homemade booze.

Former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien vowed to decriminalize
pot. The federal Liberals in B.C. voted in June to have it legalized,
with this Langley resolution placing third in importance behind
environmental stewardship and carbon tax.The trade in bud for guns has
made Langley a shooting gallery for the Angels and Asian gangs.

This province alone reaps almost a billion bucks in taxes from
government liquor stores. According to RCMP, pot grosses $6 billion
annually. This goes into the jeans of the gangs.

What an outcry we would have if we turned over the tax on booze and
cigarettes to these characters. Yet we turn a blind eye to the
economic benefits of taxing and regulating pot production and
everything that flows from such a move.

We would take back our neighbourhoods, empty out our jails and
concentate on the heroin and cocaine being imported from countries,
including Afghanistan, that could benefit from legalization in terms
of selling their agriculatural products to pharmaceutical companies.

The war on drugs is over. We lost. But we are left with the influx of
guns, cash and cocaine bartered for pot from our neighbours to the
south - and a miserable pipeline of Mexican and Koreans entering the
U.S. illegally from our side.

Americans regularly shop for drugs on Canadian websites; tranquilizers
and erectile dysfunction drugs top the list in U.S. drug use. American
country music star Merle Haggard spent time in solitary confinement
before he was 21 for making home brew - Ronald Reagen granted him a
full pardon.

But then again, a former Langley Township mayor retired to the
Kootenays, where he was busted for growing pot.

Connect the dots, Canadians. Vote for the party that will legalize pot
and bring law and order to our community.

Karen Kersey

Langley