HARSHER WAR ON POT DISSERVICE TO OFFICERS

Editor, The News:

Typically, the police are asking for stiffer penalties and mandatory
minimum sentences for marijuana growers.

Not only is this a disservice to the fallen officers in Alberta, but
the policy will further endanger Canadian police and civilians. Police
simply do not have the resources, and Canadians cannot afford to give
them the resources, to ever win this "war on drugs".

Cannabis is lucrative specifically because it is illegal. As long as
cannabis is worth its weight in gold, people will continue to take big
risks to grow it.

If the sentences increase, so will the value, and so will the
dangers.

If cannabis were grown by licensed growers, and sold by licensed
sellers, it would not only do more to keep cannabis out of the hands
of children, it would take billions out of the coffers of organized
crime.

Regulated cannabis growing would make these clandestine growers
irrelevant, and mandatory minimum sentences have failed miserably in
the U.S., so there is absolutely no indication they would work here.

Police would actually have more powers of investigation and
enforcement in a climate of regulation, as they do now with alcohol.
Why build more jails, more courthouses, hire more officers and spend
billions more dollars every year on a failed policy, just to subsidize
organized crime?

Alcohol prohibition didn't work in the last century and it fueled
organized crime.

Prohibition of cannabis isn't working now, and fuels organized
crime.

Our government needs to regulate cannabis growing immediately or this
situation will continue to get worse.

Russell Barth

Educators For Sensible Drug Policy

Ottawa