LEGALIZATION OF POT GOOD FOR SOCIETY

To the Editor,

Re: Prohibitionists losing legal debate, Letters, Jan. 10.

I read Whelm King and other recent letters in support of the
legalization of marijuana with great interest and agree with their
primary position, which is that the present illegal status of
marijuana inflicts greater harm on society than if it were fully legalized.

In the course of my work, I have visited Mexico at least a dozen times
over the past few years and it is my fervent wish that those who
support the continued illegal status of marijuana should have the
opportunity to visit that embattled nation and witness a horror of
almost biblical proportion for themselves.

We in Canada are disgusted at reading about three or four murders in
the Vancouver area over the past couple of weeks.

Perhaps we should consider Ciudad Juarez, just south of El Paso,
Texas, where the number of murders has soared into the thousands; or
Torreon further south where seventeen people were murdered in a
restaurant because they were at a birthday party hosted by a drug lord.

Perhaps they should visit the area just south of Brownsville, Texas
where unmarked graves containing dozens of people have been discovered.

Fear stalks that proud nation, poverty is on the increase and
businesses located in rural areas are shutting down because they
cannot provide adequate security for their workers or management.

The tens of billions of illegal funds pouring into Mexico have allowed
inhuman thugs to bribe and control both police and government and
those daring to travel by highways in rural areas are open to the
possibility of attack from either illegal thugs or police and soldiers
brandishing weapons.

It is a frightening spectre and it is due solely to the fact that
drugs are illegal and therefore out of the realm of normal civil control.

If they became legal, the drug lords could find themselves out of
business in the same way that bootleggers are gone and for the same
reason that there are no illegal tobacco cartels to prey on the
vulnerable public.

It is well overdue for this status of illegality to be abolished and
for the sanity of open, legal and safe manufacturing and distribution
to take its place.

Leonard Melman

Nanoose Bay