Re: ``Bud Blight''
[Note: I have sent this to the Avenue editors, but have not received a response — if I do, it will be presented here.] After reading your recent article on marijuanna grow operations in Calgary (``Bud Blight'', October), I would like to make a couple observations.
First, lets presume your figures are correct; this is a big presumption, since your "facts" on THC content use the thoroughly-debunked Drug Enforcement Agency figures -- nobody ever smoked 1%-THC-content pot; that's the stuff clothes are made from. <>[1]
[1] -- See Slate magazine's article, for example: slate.msn.com
Regardless, you claim that Calgary police seized crops worth $101.6 million. That is a whopping figure, but where does it all go? Well, straight into our economy -- pot dealers, growers and buyers, as you correctly note, live here. Your figures are clearly retail figures, so this money is getting spread out through the industry, just like any other one: growers, distributors and salesmen are all getting some of these $100 million yearly dollars.
The thrust of your article seems to be that pot growing is a "problem" to be "solved" (and certainly at least the police view it this way). Let's pretend for a wild moment that the police were capable of stopping 100% of this harmless plant from being grown or distributed in Calgary; what then? Well, for starters, at least $100 million dollars would immediately vanish from our economy. With median family incomes in Alberta of $60,142 (in 2000, latest Statistics Canada figures), that means that approximately 1700 family-sized incomes would disappear -- where will this money come from?
It seems safe to presume that pot producers, sellers, etcetera are not deriving *all* their income from pot sales. Let's presume that they make up to 50% of their gross income through marijuanna -- that means that 3400 median-income-level families will suddenly find themselves well below the poverty line. Presuming, further, that Alderman Diane Colley-Urquhart's ridiculous suggestion to increase incarceration levels for plant-growers is followed, there would be approximately 2000 additional people put in jail (the average number of adults in those 3400 families), at an average cost of $50,000/year (federal prison figures), this would drain a further $100 million. Also, the now-"orphaned" children will be put in the loving, nurturing hands of the state (at further cost). Glorious!
So, to follow your article's logical conclusion, you are advocating taking $200 million out of Calgary's economy and putting at least 2000 otherwise hard-working Calgarians uselessly in jail at huge expense.
Sounds idiotic to me; an alternative would be to stop spending loads of money on police and court time by making the plant legal and spend the savings (or taxes! quick, what's 10% of $100 million?) on treating the addicts, who are the ones who really need the help.