MORE ARRESTED FOR POT THAN FOR VIOLENT CRIMES

In response to "Police are enforcing commonly broken laws" (April 22
letter), I was really moved by your commentary on the state of affairs here
at Penn State. As you said, the students who are most likely to commit a
rape are undoubtedly the ones that have been drinking or "harmlessly
smoking a joint." Particularly those pot smokers.

After all, a whopping 4 percent of rapes are committed by individuals under
the influence of illicit drugs and 30 percent of rapes involve alcohol
(according to Alcohol and Crime Report, Bureau of Justice, 1998). The
police here are certainly not doing their jobs. Marijuana is illegal, as is
underage drinking. For that matter, sodomy is also illegal, but how many
people get arrested for that?

Last year only 704,821 people were arrested for marijuana-related crimes.
Not nearly enough when you consider that 635,990 people were arrested for
rape, murder and robbery and aggravated assault combined, and marijuana is
certainly twice as common as any of those things (FBI Uniform Crime
Report). Here at Penn State, 38 percent of student use drugs, not including
alcohol (Student Affairs Research and Assessment Office). If we could just
figure out a way to get all these people arrested and thrown in jail, the
rest of us could get on with our learning. After all, if we aren't going to
enforce these laws, then we would have changed them by now, right? So let's
enforce them!

While we're at it, let's get some drug sniffing dogs walking the streets,
put some alcohol checkpoints up, close the frats and bars (those hives of
debauchery) and put up some cameras on Beaver Avenue.

Aaron Leese, senior-electrical engineering and letters, arts and science