DRUG WAR HAS CREATED WEED WORTH WEIGHT IN GOLD

Editor:

The marijuana eradication efforts of Tehama County Sheriff Clay Parker are
no doubt well-intended, but ultimately counterproductive. Such efforts only
make illegal growing more profitable. Thanks to the drug war's distortion
of basic supply and demand dynamics an easily grown weed is literally worth
its weight in gold. Our tax dollars effectively subsidize organized crime.
With money practically growing on trees any operations destroyed will be
replaced.

Politicians need to stop worrying about the message drug policy reform
sends to children and start thinking about the children themselves. Jailing
pot smokers and citizens responding to the financial incentives created by
drug laws does absolutely nothing to protect children from drugs. The
thriving black market has no age controls, making it easier for kids to buy
pot than beer.

Although marijuana is relatively harmless compared to alcohol - pot has
never been shown to cause an overdose death - marijuana prohibition is
deadly. As the most popular illicit drug, marijuana provides the black
market contacts that introduce youth to hard drugs like meth. Current drug
policy is a gateway policy. As counterintuitive as it may seem, replacing
marijuana prohibition with regulation would do a better job protecting
children from drugs than the never-ending drug war.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A.

The Lindesmith Center

Drug Policy Foundation

Washington, D.C.