LEGALIZE CANNABIS AND MAKE WORLD SAFER

Norfolk OPP Insp. Zvonko Horvat is doing some backwards thinking (Top
cop voices concern over legal pot operations, Nov. 18).

I have concern over cannabis (marijuana) prohibition, which has set up
in North America in the last eight decades because it is obviously
leading to serious rising crime. If allowed to continue it will create
escalated extreme violent crime as is the case in Mexico.

Is Horvat so ignorant that he honestly doesn't realize in October,
$8,000 in cannabis was stolen from a greenhouse because artificial
black market prices make the plant worth its weight in gold? Eliminate
Horvat and other cannabis prohibitionists from the equation and we're
talking about perhaps $800 in plant material and no theft.

It's clearly time to legalize the God-given plant cannabis and make
the world a safer place. Even Canada's 2002, Senate Committee on
Illegal Drugs unanimously recommended to regulate cannabis the same
way as alcohol and the Le Dain Commission's report did the same.
Murder rates decreased for 10 years after ending the original
prohibition with alcohol and there's every reason to believe ending
the sequel will have the same results.

Stan White Dillon, Colorado