IF TOBACCO, WHY NOT CANNABIS?

Earlier this week, the Cannabis Reform Coalition at the University of
Massachusetts reportedly collected a sufficient amount of signatures
to place a question on the legalization of marijuana on the Amherst
Town Ballot, to be taken to vote on March 28, provided that those
signatures are verified.

The CRC was published in the Daily Collegian yesterday with an
unofficial signature count of 3072, which dwarfs the tally of 1864
that is necessary to place the question on the ballot - even
considering that many of the names gathered will be found to be
ineligible because of the voting status of the signees.

Last year, the CRC came roughly 100 signatures short of putting the
issue to the vote of the town, but because of, as Coalition president
Vernon Coffey said, "the support and help we received from the other
colleges in the area," the petition was more successful this time around.

The Collegian feels that on a national level, it is foolish for the
government to continuously tolerate cigar and cigarette smoke if
marijuana is left illegal.

With the current United States laws in place, public use of tobacco is
accepted at the discretion of given institution, but use of cannabis
is not. This creates an unmistakably hypocrytical juxtaposition in
the country's legal stances.

If the argument against legalizing marijuana is that it is hazardous
to one's health and that it is a "gateway" drug, meaning that it is
not detrimentally harmful but that it leads the user to more deadly
substances, such as heroin or cocaine, what is the argument for
continuing to allow tobacco to be legal?

According to the World Health Organization, a smoking-related death
occurs once every 10 seconds. Only China rates higher than the United
States among nations in the consumption of cigarettes, a consumption
that is projected by the WHO to cause a death toll of 10 million by
the year 2020.

Even still, continuing to spew statistics on the dangers of the use of
cigars and cigarettes seems pointless. These facts are well known,
but have yet to sway the Government in their lawmaking practices.
What is apparently more influential is the dollar bill: in particular,
the approximately 5.2 billion of them that tobacco exports bring in
here in the U.S. every year.

Because of this, the question of whether or not to legalize marijuana
must be viewed on financial terms. The substance's usefulness for
medicinal purposes is not acknowledged outside the state of Maine,
where it was recently legalized. It can be assumed that the effect of
cannabis on people's health, positive or negative, is unimportant to
the nation, if the country's laws on tobacco are any indication of
it's priorities.

Working only with the almighty dollar as the tool of judgment, it must
be asked how much money is spent controlling the use of cannabis by
respective law enforcement agencies that are funded in some way by the
government. It can also be asked how useful this spending is. Do
individuals choose not to use marijuana for recreational purposes
because there is an omniscient law against it? While there are no
hard statistics, the Collegian guesses not.

Economically speaking, it might be in Washington's best interest to
legalize marijuana. Not only would the government save money by
cutting funding for law enforcement practices that are essentially in
vain, but immeasurable amounts of revenue would also be enjoyed by
the greedy nation with the inevitable taxation of legally marketed
marijuana.

In addition, with national regulation of the marijuana bought and
sold, the chances of potentially harmful tainted cannabis are reduced
- - diminishing the dangers that are so often used to argue against
legalization.

The Collegian wishes the CRC luck in its attempt to legalize marijuana
in the town of Amherst. The charge to reveal the hypocrisy of this
nation's policies needs to begin somewhere. The Collegian hopes that
the charge will begin in Amherst.