CAMP EFFORTS BLEAK

To the Editor:

The Union Democrat's editors have written an editorial so bad, "Pot
farms thrive despite best CAMP efforts" (Aug 15), that it must be rebutted.
You make sense when you say (addressing large illegal cannabis farms)
"we don't need them..." Indeed, we don't. Those jobs and the profits
from such massive commercial gardening need to go to workers and
employers in the U.S., not foreign criminal syndicates.

Your editorial says you "commend Campaign Against Marijuana Planting
for doing an exemplary job of ridding both public and private lands
of the plantations." It then goes on to say "the seizures have hardly
put a stop to illegal growing." If CAMP were doing an exemplary job
would record amounts of illegal cannabis be growing in our national
parks and national forests?

The drug war - CAMP's engine - is sadly, only Prohibition No. 2.
There are no successes to this Prohibition, only failures. For 70
years pot has been illegal and it is now our nation's No. 1
agricultural crop? That folks, is failure. Abject, utter, inexcusable failure.

Legalization of cannabis means ending our second botched attempt at
Prohibition. But this time we have not just failed but have lost our
way. The "Land of the free" is now only a phrase of legend, as we
have become the world's new gulag (a label applied to our prison
system by ex-drug czar Barry McCaffrey).

Prohibition failed once and we ended it. Prohibition has failed,
again, and we need to end it, again.

Allan Erickson, Drug Policy Forum of Oregon

Eugene, Ore.