Pubdate: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 Source: Langley Advance (CN BC) Copyright: 2009 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc. Contact: http://www.langleyadvance.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1248 Author: Dan Grice TAX POT TO REDUCE SERIOUS CRIME Dear Editor, Langley MP Mark Warawa and the Conservatives are again engaging in retail politics, rather than using our taxes wisely. Despite more than half of Canadians feeling that pot should be privatized, the Conservatives insist that taxpayers should fork out hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for more prisons, judges, and police to prosecute pot smokers and small growers. Yet, nearly every expert recognizes that organized gangs will continue to make billions in tax free profits. Bill C-15, recently supported by Mark Warawa, sets minimum prison sentences of six months in jail for someone who grows as few as five pot plants. This will further clog up our courts and result in longer waits to try dangerous offenders such as the Bacon brothers, while forcing the provinces to build more remand centres in our communities. Where are our politician's spending priorities? This money would be better spent on hiring more doctors to care for seniors and creating new after-school programs to keep teenagers out of crime. With deficits soaring, in the next few years governments will be forced to cut services or increase taxes. Instead of raising income taxes and cutting hospitals, it only makes sense that we should follow California's lead and consider taxing cannabis and reducing the amount of non-violent offenders whom we choose to imprison. Privatizing pot would help cut the federal deficit, put gangs out of business, and keep taxes lower for non-pot smokers. It is time that fiscal conservatives demand that the federal government use our tax dollars responsibly. Dan Grice, Langley - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom