CONSERVATIVES PUSH JAIL TIME AND PROHIBITION

Bill C-15 was designed specifically to increase crime [Straight Talk,
December 31-January 7]. It is designed to manufacture more
criminals.[for] the new multibillion-dollar for-profit prison
industry. Also, by scaring off the small-time pot growers with threats
of mandatory jail time, the government is handing more of the business
to the gangsters, who are not afraid of anything.

This will result in more wealth for them, which means more violent
competition. Future governments will use this inevitable increase in
crime to justify the increased budgets and powers of police, the
building of a dozen more jails, and the further erosion of our
collective civil rights and liberties. It also helps them pander to
their myopic and misinformed voter base, and paints anyone sen-sible
as "soft" on crime..Of course, legalizing and regulating marijuana
alone would save us about a billion dollars a year, generate an
additional $3 billion in annual tax revenue, free up police resources,
and drastically reduce the demand for hard drugs. That is $4 billion a
year for things that actually reduce drug use, like treatment,
education, health care, job creation, and social programs.

But prohibitionists refuse to admit to facts, science, history, or
common sense. Like religious zealots, the more proof you give them,
the more they dig in their heels and insist that only more prohibition
can save us from the problems caused by prohibition. Their plan is to
spend billions, to jail tens of thousands, in the meagre hope of
terrifying millions into obeying their absurd, gangster-subsidizing
laws.

Prohibitionists are not merely demented, they are diabolically
evil.

Russell Barth

Nepean, ON