Pubdate: Mon, 30 Dec 2002
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Robert Merkin
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n2325/a06.html

RESTRICTIVE POT LAWS BENEFIT REAL CRIMINALS

B.C. Solicitor General Rich Coleman is perfectly correct when he links 
marijuana grow-ops with organized crime (Grow-ops lead to gang mayhem and 
murder, Letters, Dec. 23).

The United States has had 14 catastrophic years of proof of this -- 1919 to 
1933, when our government made alcoholic beverages illegal. Huge numbers of 
Americans still wanted beer, wine and whiskey, and were willing to pay huge 
prices for it. So organized crime took over the alcohol industry -- and 
kept all the profits, and gave none back in taxes. During Prohibition, an 
estimated 15 per cent of American law enforcement officers were on the 
payroll of bootleggers.

Organized crime and its gang violence and police corruption vanished from 
the alcohol trade overnight after Prohibition was repealed in 1933. We 
still have violent criminal gangs, but they deal in the drugs which the 
same government has made illegal.

Organized crime and its gang violence will vanish from British Columbia's 
marijuana industry overnight when marijuana is decriminalized or legalized, 
regulated, supervised and taxed. If the solicitor general opposes this, and 
promises that a get-tough law-enforcement approach will make B.C. safe from 
criminal gangs, he is ordering law enforcement to ladle water with a sieve, 
making promises he knows he cannot keep and perhaps concealing some other 
agenda -- such as a perpetual increase in his own budget, staff and 
political power.

Robert Merkin

Northampton, Mass.
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MAP posted-by: Beth