WHAT PLANET IS DARRYL PLECAS FROM?

Editor: Is he on the same planet?

I find it bizarre that Dr. Darryl Plecas' comments (The Times, April
26), tend to be in contradiction to those of most other
criminologists, and often common sense.

I do not know if his position as holder of the RCMP research chair
has anything to do with this, but tend to suspect that he may be in
the same position as the MD's employed by the pharmaceutical
companies to validate their products.

While we tend to be fixated on gangs and drugs, I would like first to
question this fixation by Dr. Plecas. If we are to have our savings
and chances of a reasonable retirement stolen from us, it will
probably be as a result of fraud. The chances of that fraud being
carefully investigated are slim to none.

A significant proportion of the elderly who are victims of these
frauds will commit suicide. Despite overwhelming evidence of
countless stock market frauds, resulting in multi-million dollar
losses to Canadians yearly, prosecutions can be counted on the
fingers of one hand. The same applies to all the other types of frauds.

Today it is possible that, as a result of fraudulent behaviour by
banks, involving over $60 trillion in losses, the whole world's
economy is at serious risk.

Drugs have been with us since the beginning of time. We first see
opium production recorded in Mesopotania in 4,000 B.C.E. Before that
time, there was no written language for us to decode.

Marijuana and the coca plant certainly predate this, as there was the
extraction process necessary for the user to experience their
effects.Today, the world drug trade represents seven per cent of all
the world's trade, equivalent to the entire textile industry.

Everywhere in the world, drugs are an easy meduim to provide ready
cash for the purchase of arms. This applies not only to gangs, but to
goverments and rebel groups in some of the more troubled areas of the
world. Even Mao Tse-Tung used heroin to supply his military
requirements early in his career.

Plecas, however, seems to suggest that all of this will disappear in
the Lower Mainland, through the hard work of Hydro and the fire department.

If we are ever to control the gangs and the mayhem caused by the
young socially inept people drawn to them, we must first control
drugs. While they are illegal. we have effectively given all control
to gangsters who ensure there is a dealer outside every school.

Only if drugs are legalized can we control them and cut out the
gangs. It is currently easier for children to obtain drugs than
alcohol or tobacco. Use of tobacco, the most lethal of all the drugs
and a legal substance, has been reduced by two-thirds over the past
30 years. How was this achieved? By education.

It is interesting to note that Barack Obama in his book about things
his father taught him, admits to cocaine and marijuana use from high
school to his last year at university.

The same is true of the previous two U.S presidents, though it was
not so openly admitted. While I believe that all drugs are harmful,
this obviously puts a lie to some of our conceptions.

All of our controlled drugs were legal and obtained through
pharmacies until the 1920s. The pharmacists did not shoot each other
for market share. Since then the proportion of persons addicted to
drugs, in that they are unable to live a normal life, has remained
unchanged, despite billions of dollars spent on enforcement.

Tony Smith, Langley