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Prohibition not the answer for drugs

Re: Legalizing marijuana not the answer for Canada, Guest Comment, Feb. 8, 2012.

Re: Legalizing marijuana not the answer for Canada, Guest Comment,  Feb. 8, 2012.

Concerning RCMP Cpl. Scott Hilderly’s guest editorial opposing the legalization of marijuana, the question should not be what harmful effects cannabis might or might not have, but rather how to best deal with any problem there may be.

Our young people have easier access to illegal recreational drugs, than to the legal ones, nicotine and alcohol.

My grandmother said of prohibition, it took drinking out of the parlour and put it behind the barn. In the parlour, she could control it. Were recreational drugs decriminalized, they could be quality controlled, taxed, and regulated.  Pushers would no longer have the profit motive to introduce young people to drugs.

Prohibition did not work for alcohol, and is not working for recreational drugs.

Society through education and regulation has greatly reduced the harm caused by nicotine. Portugal has experienced a sharp decline in hard drug use, since legalization, and treating addiction as a medical problem rather than a criminal one.

We should not import methods which have failed in the U.S. to cope with drugs, as does the omnibus crime bill.

It will be a social and economic disaster, creating at great expense a criminal class of young people who experiment with recreational drugs.

J. McRee (Mac) Elrod

Metchosin