Pubdate: Wed, 10 Jul 2002
Source: Grand Forks Gazette (CN BC)
Page 7
Copyright: 2002 Sterling Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.sterlingnews.com/Forks
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/525
Author: Chris Donald
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1177/a09.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

FOCUSING ON POT MISSES THE POINT

Editor, The Gazette:

Re: Pot industry grows out in open (June 19, 2002)

The RCMP are becoming increasingly obsessed with their war on greedy 
gardeners to the exclusion of all other priorities, despite the fact that 
their own study by the University College of Fraser Valley has just proven 
it to be a futile waste of tax dollars against an industry whose 
uncontrolled growth can only be compared to home distilling during alcohol 
prohibition.

Ever since the RCMP declared war on cannabis growers a few years ago, the 
amount of heroin the police have seized has dropped by more than half 
nation-wide.  That is according to their own 2001 Drug Situation in Canada 
report.

What is worse, according to the statistics from the Canadian Center on 
Substance Abuse website, in 1999 one in 35 Grade 8 students in Ontario had 
tried heroin in the previous year, or 2.8 per cent.  These are 13- and 
14-year-old kids, and approximately one in every class had tried "junk" 
before the apparent police surrender on heroin to go after a plant!

British Columbia teens generally use all drugs at comparable or higher 
levels than teens in Ontario, according to smaller B.C. studies on the same 
website.

This at a time when over two-thirds of Canadians support cannabis 
decriminalization, and approximately half of Canadians support the outright 
legalization of cannabis, a figure that rises to 56 per cent in B.C., which 
is the tried and true historical solution to putting the criminals who 
profit from prohibition out of business.

With grow-ops and the cannabis black market eliminated by legalization, and 
sales of cannabis to adults in public where the police can easily keep an 
eye on teen access, police might actually have the resources available to 
do more than pay lip-service to keeping teens away from alcohol and 
nicotine, as well as cannabis and heroin.

Chris Donald, Dartmouth, N.S.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager