LAFAYETTE JUDGE STANDS UP FOR STONERS

Kudos to municipal court judge Leonard Frieling for resigning in
protest of the Lafayette City Council's asinine ratcheting up of
marijuana penalties. Marijuana prohibition is a colossal failure. The
University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study reports that
lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the United States than any
European country, yet America is one of the few Western countries
that uses its criminal justice system to punish citizens who prefer
marijuana to martinis.

Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose
death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. The
short-term health effects of marijuana are inconsequential compared
to the long-term effects of criminal records. Unfortunately,
marijuana represents the counterculture to many Americans. In
subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors, government is
subsidizing organized crime.

The drug war's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand make
an easily grown weed literally worth its weight in gold. The only
clear winners in the war on marijuana are drug cartels and shameless
tough-on-drugs politicians who've built careers confusing drug
prohibition's collateral damage with a relatively harmless plant. The
big losers in this battle are the American taxpayers deluded into
believing big government is the appropriate response to
non-traditional consensual vices. The results of a comparative study
of European and U.S. rates of drug use can be found at
www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/espad-pr.pdf

Robert Sharpe, policy analyst

Common Sense for Drug Policy/via Internet