END DRUG PROHIBITION TO REDUCE VIOLENT CRIME

In the story Martin announces measures to curb gun, gang violence (SP
Nov. 10) the prime minister's plan to make us safer is remarkably
lacking in content. He apparently intends to increase jail terms and
give more money to youth programs. There is nothing new in this
prescription, nor has it proven successful.

Although well-run youth programs may have some impact, increasing
jail time doesn't work. Is American society less crime-ridden, even
though two per cent of its adult population is in jail or on parole
due to long jail terms and mandatory minimums? If anything, harsher
penalties lead to harsher crimes committed by people with little to lose.

The way to reduce crime is to end the prohibition of marijuana and
other drugs. Stop pumping billions of dollars into the underworld.
Why would someone go to school when hundreds of dollars a day can be
earned working in a gang delivering drugs? Where that many dollars
are floating around, guns and violence are sure to follow. When the
U.S. repealed prohibition, the murder rate fell by almost half over
the following five years.

Prohibition has not reduced drug use. Rates of drug use are typically
lower where drugs are legally available. People who use drugs under
prohibition do so with greater health consequence, because of unknown
drug purity and disease due to dirty drugs and paraphernalia. Health
costs are less where drugs are legally available.

A fundamental principle of democracy is that by giving people the
freedom to make their own choices, they will do a better job than by
following coercive laws.

If prohibition is repealed, some people will make bad choices, but
the great majority of people will do what is right for themselves --
and for those who make the wrong choices, help will be quicker and cheaper.

Ken Sailor

Saskatoon