POT PROHIBITION WILL SOON GO THE WAY OF THE DODO BIRD

One has to wonder why some people continue to flog a dead horse.

We know that a major recession-proof cash crop in B.C. (which is not
going away) is marijuana, and that a direct cause of today's highly
publicized violence is narcotics prohibition; an expensive failed
model which the majority of B.C. and Canadian citizens do not support.
Further, anybody monitoring the tide of public opinion in most of the
rest of the developed world knows that soft-drug prohibition is soon
to be gone the way of the dodo bird.

Amazingly, we still have people like Attorney-General Wally Oppal
paddling upstream. Oppal was heard on the airwaves on Tuesday morning,
saying that Mexico's consideration of legalizing marijuana would
jeopardize free trade.

How about we reverse the argument and say that the U.S. continuing its
drug war is causing intolerable hardship (among other things) here in
Canada and in Mexico?

For yet another example of drug war fallout, one has to look no
further than The Sun's story about a dope-smoking Mountie who has
lost his integrity, his self-esteem and his job as a result of one of
the most stupid, hypocritical, mean, backward and expensive chapters
of our 20th-century culture that I can think of.

Ian Tootill

Vancouver