The Preacher & Cannabis.

[greenbuddha]

US NC: PUB LTE: The Preacher And Pot

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URL: http://www.mapinc.or...2/n189/a03.html

Newshawk: Kirk

Votes: 1

Pubdate: Mon, 19 Mar 2012

Source: Winston-Salem Journal (NC)

Copyright: 2012 Piedmont Publishing Co. Inc.

Contact: letters@wsjournal.com

Website: http://www.journalnow.com/

Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/504

Note: The Journal does not publish LTEs from writers outside its

circulation area

Author: Patricia Stockmeister

 

 

 

THE PREACHER AND POT

 

In response to Tamara Dietrich's column, "Pat Robertson, a hero to hippies," this is the first thing he has said in many years that makes sense: Legalize pot, marijuana, whatever name you put to cannabis.

 

Robertson said, "I think it's just shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hard-core criminals because they had possession of a very small amount of controlled substance. The whole thing is crazy."

 

Let's look at the numbers. According to this column, 2.5 million are incarcerated for "soft" nonviolent drug offenses. This costs billions of dollars: $41.3 billion a year on enforcement, $25.7 billion to state and local governments. Legalizing pot alone would save $9 billion. Then, if these drugs are taxed at rates comparable to alcohol and tobacco, it would yield $46.7 billion a year, $8.7 billion from pot.

 

Most important: It would stop the illegal cartels, i.e., drug lords from foreign countries bringing the drug war into the United States.

 

I hope Robertson will step up to the plate and be a crusader in this issue ( which he says he is not ).

 

I have done research and agree with this column's statement: "The addiction rate for drugs has held fairly steady at 1.3 percent of the population since the late 1800s."

 

For what it's worth, I smoked pot a few times. I didn't like it, but lots of people do. It's a personal choice. Let us go forward, not back to Prohibition times.

 

PATRICIA STOCKMEISTER

 

Winston-Salem

MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom

[Fat Freddy]

67 billion dollars in total. That would go a long way toward improving our education system and roads.

Not to mention tearing down abandoned houses that serve the criminal elements as dumping grounds for " mis-deeds"

to put it lightly.