LEGAL POT BRINGS ORDER

Dear 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
home-made 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 the 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 the RCMP, pot grosses $6 billion annually that 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
- - taking back our neighbourhoods, emptying out our jails and
concentrating on the heroin and cocaine being imported from countries,
including Afghanistan - that could benefit from legalization in terms
of selling their agricultural 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 Regan
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