Pubdate: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU) Copyright: 2004 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc. Contact: http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274 Author: Russell Barth Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04.n1545.a03.html BERTON RIGHT ON WRONG PRIORITIES Re: your profile of Pierre Berton (Gazette, Oct. 30, "At 84, he's still a star"). The article quotes Berton as saying: "We're putting more money into searching out marijuana users than we are into searching out child molesters." He couldn't be more right. It is absolutely criminal how much money we waste on a failed policy such as prohibition, when we could be spending it instead on day care, health care, affordable housing, the military and so on. With prohibition, the growers, dealers and cops win. The dealers and growers love prohibition because it makes easy-to-grow weed worth its weight in gold. The police like prohibition because they like the power, but mostly they love the overtime. Police have a huge budgetary interest in keeping prohibition alive. The ones who lose out are the harmless pot users and the taxpayers who are footing the awesome bill to support prohibition. If prohibition were going to work, it would have worked by now. Russell Barth Ottawa - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin