REGULATE POT

In your Nov. 14 editorial "Busted in the boy's room," you pose the question
of whether the incident of prepackaged marijuana allegedly being sold at
Greensburg Salem Senior High School is an isolated incident or part of a
bigger problem.

I can assure you that this problem is not isolated and will occur anywhere
that there is a market for marijuana or other drugs. From the description
given, the alleged dealer was not pushing his products on unsuspecting
teens, but instead meeting their demands for the product by filling their
"orders" that were placed in the morning.

I was involved in a similar situation in my high school in Ontario, Canada.
I was a senior and started hanging out with the wrong crowd. My new friends
expressed interest in acquiring marijuana but were afraid of being cheated
by other student dealers. I was not a drug user at the time, but I knew
people who could get marijuana in quantities and decided to start selling
it to meet the demand expressed by my peers.

This sort of thing is happening everywhere right now. Alcohol had almost no
presence at my high school, despite the fact that I and my peers did drink
while underage. I think that if the black market for drugs were eliminated
from the schools, the problem would move off school property the same as
the underage drinking problem is mostly off school property.

The black market can only be eliminated by proper and careful legalization
and regulation of marijuana in much the same manner as alcohol.
Furthermore, by taking marijuana out of the hands of black- market dealers,
students will be less likely to come in contact with the harder drugs that
some marijuana dealers sell.

Chris Hagglund

Toronto, Ontario, Canada