Pubdate: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 Source: National Post (Canada) Copyright: 2011 Canwest Publishing Inc. Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286 Author: Jeffrey Hay Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n722/a11.html?1284 KEEP THE WAR ON DRUGS GOING Re: We Can't Afford A War On Weed, Larry Campbell, Philip Owen and Sam Sullivan, Dec. 19. The former mayors of Vancouver advocating for decriminalizing the gateway drug cannabis is ludicrous. It was largely because of their permissiveness and leniency that Vancouver's Downtown Eastside turned into the nightmare that it is today. Continuing down this path would be asinine. Seattle, a city comparable in weather and socio-economic climate, does not have the same problem with open drug use simply because it is not tolerated. New York cleaned up its decaying core in the 1980s by cracking down on drug use, not by some hare-brained scheme of decriminalization. The constant reference to "the war on drugs" is also getting tiresome. The struggle to keep drugs off the streets is more like a constant battle, similar to those society wages with any other illegal, undesirable activity. Jeffrey Hay Ladner B.C. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.