No one needs a pound of pot
Editor, The Times:
Now that I see Steve Sarich was abusing the law and being greedy — probably selling for profit — I don’t have as much sympathy for him [“How much medical pot is too much?” page one, March 17]. So it was an illegal operation under the guise of medicine, obviously.
I don’t understand why the amounts people are allowed to have are so large? I don’t smoke anymore, but do you know how much a pound of pot is?
This medical-marijuana business is shady, I believe. They should just make it legal, taxed and regulated at normal stores — for medicine or recreation. No one needs to always have a keg of Budweiser or a fully stocked bar around the house and no one needs a pound of pot.
I am outspoken about a lot of things I don’t like, but I don’t break the laws I wish to see changed. Too bad people were injured in this event and still feel upset about the militarized response. I still hope for the basic laws to be changed.
— Brian Caldwell, Everett
Legalize to avoid more incidents in Mexico and at home
A home invasion and shootout in Kirkland and an American consular official and her husband shot in their car in Mexico with their baby left crying in the back seat [“Danger signs apparent before Mexico attacks,” News, March 16]. What else do we need before we start looking at the economics that fuel the marijuana trade?
Keeping pot illegal just makes it more expensive because you have to pay a lot more to motivate businesspeople to risk jail to sell it to you. All that cash attracts competition that is then expressed through the barrel of a gun. Let’s remember the lessons of Prohibition, which attempted to ban a substance far more damaging to health and society: alcohol.
Let’s change our policies about marijuana and put it on the same footing as alcohol — regulated, taxed and far cheaper — which will take the drug lords out of the business. Repealing Prohibition ended the gang wars in Chicago.
Let’s decriminalize marijuana and end the gun battles in Mexico as well as here at home.
— Mark Nassutti, Kirkland
Gun trafficking to blame
Commenting on the level of drug violence in Juarez, Mexico, The Seattle Times’ editorial board says, “These gruesome tallies are the byproduct of a lethal industry that satisfies U.S. appetites” [“A war close to home,” Opinion, March 16].
The president of Mexico agrees; Felipe Calderón says that little will change as long as the United States continues to make gun purchases so easy. He knows that odds are 9-to-1 that the weapons used in Saturday’s killing of American consulate workers were purchased in the United States.
Now the NRA lobbyists will tell us the problem is that the strict gun-control laws in Mexico leave honest Mexicans defenseless against the criminal element of their society. However, according to a report published in The Seattle Times on Feb. 7, one is more than three times as likely to be murdered in the capital of the United States — where guns are easily accessible to law-abiding citizens — than in Mexico City — where there isn’t easy access.
— Sue Griswold, Mill Creek