Pubdate: Sat, 23 May 2009 Source: Abbotsford News (CN BC) Copyright: 2009 Abbotsford News Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/BkAJKrUD Website: http://www.abbynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1155 Author: Louise Fribance A CRIME IS A CRIME It never fails to amaze me when the solution to everything is to lower the bar and take the easy way out. Legalizing marijuana (and other drugs to follow) is the easy way out. How many people, compared to smokers and drinkers, use marijuana and other drugs? A few, comparatively. I know it looks like there are a lot of users, but that is because all the media attention is concentrated on the small number. How many students smoke and drink? Quite a few, I would think. That is because both these substances are legal and available. Think how many more students would use marijuana and hard drugs if they were legal and available. I know there are always "experts" who will say there are studies that show that isn't the case. I'd like to see the hard facts. I realize the crime rate would go down, but productivity would go down the drain. At least cigarettes, aside from killing you, do not make you a zombie. The solution is to dismantle the justice system industry. The judges keep the lawyers and themselves busy and rich by not applying the law. The police have their hands tied by the judges and the criminals are content to look at the circus and smile. As one policeman once told me, there are too many people on the take and getting rich for the drug problem to go away. Investigate where investigation is warranted - at the justice level. No more criminals walking away because a judge decided that the border officer needed a search warrant to search the criminal's car. At the border yet! Since when does privacy supersede breaking the law? Since judges decided so. We don't need to revamp the criminal code. The laws are all there. They just need to be applied. Time to stop parsing every crime. If it walks like a duck, squawks like a duck, poops like a duck, it's a duck. Let's face reality. A crime is a crime is a crime. Let's treat it as such. Louise Fribance - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake