WAR ON POT NOT WORTH THE EXPENSE

Editor, The News:

Rather than adding even more complications to the war on pot, Abbotsford
City council should censure the federal government for creating this
ongoing debacle in the first place.

We are faced with the fact that the majority of British Columbians and
Canadians want marijuana completely legalized. All problems regarding
marijuana, including grow houses, result from the fact that the Canadian
government refuses to acknowledge this.

We just can't afford this law anymore. The recent auditor general's report
on prohibition criticized the federal government for a lack of
accountability. It confirmed that the government spends $500 million a year
on its prohibition strategy, with two-thirds of all drug charges being for pot.

Five-hundred million dollars a year works out to about $60,000 an hour or
$1,000 a minute. Since two-thirds of charges are for pot, two-thirds of
that hourly budget - or $40,000 an hour - is spent on pot prohibition.
Remember that Canada's books are in the red , so we are borrowing that
$40,000 an hour and will be paying interest until the government repays the
loan, which is generally never.

Only the government could go to a bank and keep getting this kind of money
for a program that is such an abject failure. Can you imagine if any one of
us tried to get a loan from a bank on a car that does not work 95 per cent
of the time?

We can't afford to throw money like this into a bottomless pit anymore.

Chuck Beyer

Victoria