TIME TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

To the editor:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently made the embarrassingly
obvious statement that "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels
the drug trade," adding that "we have co-responsibility" for the
violence of Mexico's drug cartels.

I've seen reports that Mexican cartels sold $9 billion of pot in the
U.S. last year. One need only look back to Prohibition to see that
mixing high demand for an outlaw product guarantees a violent black market.

The good thing about this is that Mexico's cartels get over 60
percent of their revenue from U.S. marijuana sales, making them so
dependent on the marijuana trade that we could virtually shut them
down by pot legalization. Let's bring it out in the open and regulate
it like liquor, cigarettes and gambling. We can tax pot instead of
spending billions prosecuting and imprisoning people for using it and
distributing it.

Polls show most Americans support some form of legalization, and
legalization promises to generate billions of dollars in taxes while
cutting expenses and violence, yet the subject has been left to
first-term Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia. He proposed creating a federal
commission to examine a relaxation of marijuana statutes and other
potential changes to the prison system.

Sen. Webb is a former Republican and decorated Vietnam veteran who
represents a conservative-leaning swing state with laws among the
nation's most draconian, so it's not like there's a personal
political upside for him in this fight. Sen. Webb has the political
courage not to let that stop him.

JC Dufresne,

Cibolo