CONGRESS MUST LEAD ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Regarding your thoughtful May 19 editorial on the Supreme Court ruling
against medical marijuana, Congress does indeed need to show leadership on
the issue, which 70 percent of Americans support.

Not only should medical marijuana be made available, but marijuana
prohibition itself should be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis. The
health effects of marijuana are inconsequential compared to the
life-shattering effects of the punitive criminal justice system.

Unfortunately, a review of marijuana legislation would open up a Pandora's
box most politicians would just as soon avoid. America's marijuana laws are
based on culture and xenophobia, not science.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration
during the early 1900s. Essentially a disenfranchisement tool, they were
passed during an ugly time in American history when racial profiling was
expected. White Americans did not even begin to smoke marijuana until a
soon-to-be-entrenched government bureaucracy began funding "reefer madness"
propaganda. Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages and
insanity have been counterproductive at best. Roughly 38 percent of
Americans have now smoked pot. The reefer madness myths have long been
discredited, forcing the drug war gravy train to spend millions of tax
dollars on politicized research, trying to find harm in a relatively
harmless plant. Meanwhile, research that might demonstrate the medical
efficacy of marijuana is blocked.

The direct experience of millions of Americans contradicts the
sensationalistic myths used to justify marijuana prohibition. Illegal drug
use is the only public health problem wherein key stakeholders are not only
ignored, but actively persecuted and incarcerated. In terms of the recent
Supreme Court ruling, those stakeholders happen to be cancer and AIDS patients.

ROBERT SHARPE
Program Officer
The Lindesmith Center
Washington