SAVE OUR OFFICERS!

As a medical marijuana user and drug law reform advocate, I would like
to offer my sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families, loved
ones, and co-workers of the RCMP officers brutally gunned down in
Alberta Thursday.

Violence is simply not acceptable, especially when the victims are
officers attempting to protect public safety.

The simple fact of the matter is that it was prohibition, and not
cannabis users or growers as such, that caused these senseless
killings. If the cannabis-growing business were regulated, these types
of things would not happen.

The knee-jerk reaction is to call for more jails, longer sentences,
stiffer penalties, but, as we have all seen in the past decades, and
as we saw with the complete failure of alcohol prohibition in the last
century, prohibition simply will not work.

This tragedy is proof of that. How many more people have to die before
our government does something to regulate this industry?

Regulation would give police more powers of investigation and
enforcement, just as they have now with alcohol. So why force them to
continue with the ever-increasing dangers of this drug war? They have
no chance of winning, and now they are getting killed.

We, as Canadians, must demand that our federal government end this
fiasco and regulate the cannabis market immediately.

Save our police officers! End prohibition now!

Russell Barth

Educators For Sensible Drug Policy

Ottawa