N.C. COULD GET TAX MONEY BY LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

Letter writer Kirk Muse astutely notes the obvious advantages of taxing
commercial marijuana sales. We'd like to additionally note the tremendous
advantages of moving commercial pot distribution off the streets and into a
licensed, regulated setting just as we do with most in-demand drugs.

Legal drug dealers don't knowingly employ, or sell to minors. Legal drug
dealers collect taxes and conduct their business out in the open where they
can be easily regulated and monitored by requisite authorities.

Legal drug dealers do not resolve business disputes with violence against
their customers or their rival dealers. Most important, legal drug dealers
do not require police agencies to expend up to 25 percent of their entire
resources on a never-ending and futile effort to control an unlicensed and
unregulated marketplace.

Any police officer with time on the job and with integrity will acknowledge
that no matter how many Americans we arrest for possessing or distributing
marijuana, there is never any significant impact on the market. And given
that no one is legally damaged when an adult responsibly uses marijuana, it
is absurd to use police resources as we currently do to enforce useless
criminal marijuana laws.

Taking the police out of the job of "pot control" ensures that literal
billions in tax dollars each year can be transferred into investigation and
prosecution of true crimes against persons and property. These would
include - but not be limited to - drunk driving, sex crimes, domestic
violence and corporate fraud.

STEPHEN HEATH

Clearwater, Fla.

The writer works with the Florida office of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition,
located in Clearwater, Fla.