RESTRICTIVE POT LAWS BENEFIT REAL CRIMINALS

B.C. Solicitor General Rich Coleman is perfectly correct when he links
marijuana grow-ops with organized crime (Grow-ops lead to gang mayhem and
murder, Letters, Dec. 23).

The United States has had 14 catastrophic years of proof of this -- 1919 to
1933, when our government made alcoholic beverages illegal. Huge numbers of
Americans still wanted beer, wine and whiskey, and were willing to pay huge
prices for it. So organized crime took over the alcohol industry -- and
kept all the profits, and gave none back in taxes. During Prohibition, an
estimated 15 per cent of American law enforcement officers were on the
payroll of bootleggers.

Organized crime and its gang violence and police corruption vanished from
the alcohol trade overnight after Prohibition was repealed in 1933. We
still have violent criminal gangs, but they deal in the drugs which the
same government has made illegal.

Organized crime and its gang violence will vanish from British Columbia's
marijuana industry overnight when marijuana is decriminalized or legalized,
regulated, supervised and taxed. If the solicitor general opposes this, and
promises that a get-tough law-enforcement approach will make B.C. safe from
criminal gangs, he is ordering law enforcement to ladle water with a sieve,
making promises he knows he cannot keep and perhaps concealing some other
agenda -- such as a perpetual increase in his own budget, staff and
political power.

Robert Merkin

Northampton, Mass.