DRUG ENFORCEMENT FAILS WHEN KIDS LOST AS POLICE CHASE SMOKES

You have to congratulate the regional police for all the busts they
have been making over the past number of months, mostly for marijuana
and cigarettes.

I hear on the street that you can't get a joint or contraband smoke
anywhere, or these have become very difficult to find.
Congratulations, guys!

On the flip side, I also hear that coke, ecstasy, oxys, nervies (nerve
pills), perks, crack and now hydromorphone are readily available on
any street corner or gathering in any of our communities.

As we all know, these are the drugs causing all the problems in our
communities; these are the drugs killing our young people all over the
Cape Breton Regional Municipality; these are the drugs that make
people desperate enough to break into our homes while we are sleeping.

Pot doesn't kill people nor does it make them violent or cause them to
fall down. Cigarettes, although legal to obtain, are unfairly priced
for much of the population, thereby creating a market for cheap smokes.

Our governments need to refocus our drug laws and make marijuana a
legal, regulated stimulant, no different from the way we sell alcohol
and legal cigarettes. If we were to do this, marijuana would add
revenue that might take us out of debt.

This simple step would allow our drug enforcement people to focus
their attention and our tax dollars on the drugs doing real harm. Only
then would we see these drugs and the people who sell them to our
kids, friends and family members removed from society. It would be
then that we would see the youth of our communities thrive as the
citizens they started out in life to be.

Too many people are no longer here, or are so distracted by addiction
that they can't function in our society.

Drug enforcement is a failure when we lose one of our kids because our
laws have us chasing nothing more than a cigarette and a joint instead
of the drugs that are ruining our society.

Gordon MacDonald

North Sydney