POLICE 'HARVEST' A WASTE OF RESOURCES

The annual spectacle of masses of heavily equipped police swooping
down on lonely and illicit herb gardens is an amusing but expensive
farce (Gazette, Sept. 18, ''It's not just weed''). The sight of armed
police officers spending their precious time pulling up plants makes
one wonder if public resources are being spent wisely in pursuit of
failed public policy.

Marijuana mania is a highly politicized concoction of fact and
fantasy, in which the fact favours the ending of marijuana prohibition
and the fantasy warns of doomsday if this should happen. The same
debates raged in the United States during Prohibition about 75 years
ago.

When Prohibition ended, none of the doomsday predictions came true,
but ending the public expense of enforcing Prohibition freed public
funds for other applications. The additional bonus to society was the
entry of alcoholic beverages into the economic mainstream as a
legitimate source of employment, profit and taxation.

Ivor Sargent, Ste. Adele