EDITORIAL ON RCMP MURDER MISSED POINT, SAYS TEXAN

Dear Editor,

Your editorial entitled `We'll remember' (March 8) stated: "It's our
responsibility to support the men and women dedicating themselves to
protecting our communities from the pitfalls of a destructive culture.
Mayerthorpe's horror must not be forgotten. We must collectively
support the community and stand behind law-enforcement heroes still
carrying the torch that four of their associates died believing in."

There are none who would argue your point. These gentlemen died in
support of community, future and freedom, and we could best serve
their memory by truly opening the dialogue regarding the origins, the
underlying premises that make prohibition an eternal and unwinnable
war on ourselves.

In the U.S., we persisted in a war in Vietnam that eventually and
needlessly killed tens of thousands of our young people. The U.S. now
mandates that the world join us in the ever-escalating war of drug
prohibition; our request should not compel the Canadian people to
stand with us in yet another fiasco.

Please, by all means, examine all the evidence regarding marijuana use
and then make the determination as to which culture is more
destructive, the users or those who declared eternal war on the users.

Dean Becker

Houston, Tex.