TIME TO MAKE ALL DRUGS LEGAL?

All week The Province has featured letters from readers in this space.
The subject has been gang violence in our streets and what to do about
it. This letter is from Daphne and Chris Browne.

Crimes committed using a firearm ought to be punished with mandatory
life sentences in order to rid the country of creeping American-style
gun violence.

More importantly, this country needs to get over its hypocritical and
insanely unreasonable aversion to legalized drug use. If we take the
criminality out of all narcotics, and have the government regulate and
tax the production, importation and distribution of all narcotics, we
simply mirror what is being done with the deadliest drug of all --
alcohol.

We have debated for decades the damage done by various substances
people choose to intoxicate themselves with. We need to agree as a
society that cocaine, heroin, marijuana, nicotine and alcohol are ALL
bad for us, but that to criminalize something that people will
continue to obtain regardless, is dangerous and destructive. Can we
agree that it's all bad, and then move on? Take the criminality out of
it and the gangs lose their power base and reason for existing. Did
the alcohol prohibition teach us nothing? Thank you to the many
readers who sent letters on this subject. Until the problem is solved,
our elected officials must continue to hear our concerns.