WAR ON DRUGS DEFINED

Ted Williams' "Ditchweed Digs In" (March/April 2000) is exhaustively
accurate and unbiased except in one regard: his labeling of delta-nine
tetrahydrocannabinal (THC) as a "narcotic." Merriam Webster's curiously
circular second definition says a narcotic is "a drug (as marijuana or LSD)
subject to restriction similar to that of addictive narcotics whether
physiologically addictive and narcotic or not." Apparently introduced
sometime after 20th-century drug laws were enacted, this definition is
clearly a crude propaganda device. Calling THC a narcotic is reefer madness
in its purest form. We'll never be able to distinguish between hemp and
marijuana so long as we remain deceived by prohibitionist nomenclature that
equates hemp with heroin.

Larry A. Stevens, Springfield, IL