Pubdate: Mon, 27 Apr 2009
Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB)
Copyright: 2009 Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://www.edmontonsun.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/135
Author: Steve Hartwell
Note: Parenthetical remark by the Sun editor, headline by newshawk.

PROHIBITION DOES NOT WORK

The B.C. marijuana crop alone is worth at least $6 billion annually. 
The global illegal drug trade is worth over $400 billion, with that 
value caused by the products being on the black market. The 
Canada-wide war on drugs currently costs about $6 billion annually , 
and has achieved nothing except to make things a million times worse 
by maintaining those black market prices. And now Canada is doing it 
again with tobacco. Police budgets go up; new prisons have to be 
built; more courtrooms and lawyers and judges; psychiatric hospitals; 
"harm reduction" programs; the list is endless and grows 
exponentially. It is going to cost taxpayers at least 10 times as 
much to fight illegal smokes as we'll get in tax revenue. Prohibition 
does not work. And to think all this is because of junk science lies 
about second-hand tobacco smoke, so that big pharmaceutical companies 
can make billions from their own brands of nicotine-cessation 
products. It's all madness.

Steve Hartwell

(Prohibition is particularly dumb in the current economy.)
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom