A half-baked Baker

Some guy named Nick Baker wrote a letter to the editor of our local newspaper last week. Mr. Baker's hypothesis is that legalizing marijuana will cure all society's ills.

He says, among other things, that "local law enforcement . . . contribute to the problems of poverty, segregation, and ignorance in the area. By enforcing the marijuana laws so harshly and the majority of that attention seeming to be laid upon the African American community for example, local police seem to be racist, corrupt and just make the situation worse." Of course, he offered no statistics or specific examples to back his claim that police are racist and corrupt. And if they are enforcing the law, isn't that what we pay them to do? How is enforcing the law "corrupt" and "racist," no matter what color the criminal?

The erudite Mr. Baker goes on to say that, "True justice would be placing the judges and police arresting and sentencing these people behind bars." I'm very curious as to what charges he would prefer against them. Should they just pick and choose the laws they want to enforce? If Mr. Baker is ever so unfortunate as to be a crime victim, I have a feeling he will want the law enforced to the fullest extent (even if the perpetrator happens to be black).

Mr. Baker sums up his astonishingly logical arguments with "prohibition . . . makes criminals out of potentially otherwise honest people." So, maybe we should also get rid of those pesky laws against murder seeing as all those otherwise honest people who need to rid themselves of an annoying spouse, business partner, etc., are being made into criminals. No, Mr. Baker, prohibition doesn't make one a criminal. Breaking the law makes one a criminal!