STATE SHOULD END POT PROHIBITION

Kudos to The Register-Guard for printing Jim Greig's outstanding Feb.
16 guest viewpoint, "Marijuana more than medicinal."

The people of Oregon can't help but benefit by moving away from blind
adherence to a federal policy built upon racism, xenophobia and a
corrupted moral and legal foundation.

It is the prohibition of cannabis which makes it so valuable that
patients get robbed and assaulted for their gardens. All across the
western states, criminal gangs and syndicates invade our national
parks and forests growing huge farms of pot.

Marijuana is now the No. 1 agricultural commodity produced in the
United States, with a harvest worth an estimated $36 billion - without
any taxes collected. Without any controls on distribution or limits on
the age of consumers, the criminals reap the only benefit.

We Oregonians are intelligent enough to recognize stupid when it
stands right in front of us. Prohibition failed once with alcohol. It
has failed again with cannabis. Oregon should be the first state to
end the stupidity of Prohibition II.

Allan Erickson,

Eugene