POT NOT MAIN PROBLEM

Re: Three Men Charged With Trafficking Marijuana (March 10). According to
this story, three men were arrested with 92.4 grams of marijuana, which
carries a price tag of $2,300 on the street.

A little quick math tells me that this works out to roughly $710 Cdn per
ounce. The business section of the same paper lists the March 9 closing
price of gold at $532 Cdn per ounce.

If marijuana was legalized and controlled like alcohol, Al Capone-style
criminals (remember the results of alcohol prohibition) would not be able
to make 1.3 times the price of gold for growing a harmless weed in their
back yards.

As a result, our prisons would have more room for people like Jim Roszko,
and our police would have more resources available to investigate them earlier.

The media was quick to make the connection between Roszko's shootings and
marijuana growing, while downplaying all the rest of the illegal activities
he was involved in.

As I see it, this guy was a well-known psychopath with an unregistered gun,
a long list of prior violent charges, and an intense hatred for police. The
fact that he grew his own gold had nothing to do with his motivation for
shooting four Mounties.

We need to start concentrating our resources on the real criminals who are
preying on us daily, rather than wasting time worrying about which
substance people are using to relax after a hard day of paying taxes.

It sickens me to read that child molesters get 18 months of unsupervised
house arrest (March 10) in this country, while all we can think about is
persecuting people who choose a safer alternative to alcohol.

Derek Telasco

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