Pubdate: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON) Copyright: 2000, Canoe Limited Partnership. Contact: 333 King St. E., Toronto, Ontario M5A 3X5 Canada Fax: (416) 947-3228 Website: http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoSun/ Forum: http://www.canoe.ca/Chat/newsgroups.html Author: Stephen John VandeKemp Note: Parenthetical remark by the Sun editor; headline by newshawk ALLOW KIDS EXPERIMENTATION STAGE I AM appalled at the police association for condemning the decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana. The majority of parents don't want their children shackled with a criminal conviction for experimenting with relatively harmless pot. Those children, if caught, won't have the chance to become police officers or MPs, while the ones lucky enough to avoid the law will. Meanwhile, the police spend kilos of cash scaring young people into coughing up the next pot user or seller in line - very rarely a drug baron. I can appreciate the police wanting to protect their jobs and funding, but at the expense of our children? I don't think so! So let's allow our kids to grow up after this experimentation stage - just like you and I did - to become a police officers or politicians or anything else they want to become, without a criminal record. Stephen John VandeKemp Bradford (But we didn't inhale) - --- MAP posted-by: Greg