DRUG LAWS EXPOSE OUR HYPOCRISY

Editor, The News:

It must have been the dullest quill Peace Arch News editor Rob DeMone was
using when he found wits to write his latest epistle.

I am referring to his editorial criticizing the Senate on its stand on
marijuana ('Senate sends the wrong message on marijuana,' Other Views,
Sept. 10).

I strongly recommend to Rob DeMone, sharpen your quill and in the same time
your wits as well.

When will you realize that there is no way, other then the guidance of
parents and education, to prevent today's youth from becoming addicts of
any kind?

By making anything illegal, you just add glamour to it, making it
profitable for the criminal elements in society and promoting the
proliferation of the legal profession, which need more criminals to benefit
from.

Whichever way you put it, it is always the victims who have to pay the price.

It is so easy to have the weak and vulnerable in society classified as
criminals, rather than giving understanding and kindness and thereby
helping them to become a fit member of society.

Isn't it always the poor who have to pay the price?

The rich can afford all they ever want. They do not have to resort to crime
to support their habits.

We are so bent on condemning the downtrodden instead of reaching out to
them and removing them from the ranks of criminals.

All our efforts today are nothing else but to promote the leeches and the
bigots.

This is the real crime we are guilty of, all of us, the righteous citizens.

If all drugs would be removed from the 'illegal' list, real criminals would
be out of business tomorrow.

Money spent on jails and the legal profession could pay many times over for
rehabilitation of the unfortunate.

Seems we are looking the other way when it comes to enforcing the use of
tobacco.

Yeah, but it's good business!

Money, money, money!

Isn't it illegal for youths to smoke cigarettes?

Where is the law on that?

Kids, smoking in school by the thousands.

Hypocrites, are we all?

So, for the good editor to condemn our Senate is nothing but a statement
of, as he so aptly heads his epistle, a dope-a-dope.

That's the way I see it.

Richard G.A. Nitsch

White Rock