REPLACE STEREOTYPING WITH COMPASSION, SCIENCE

Dear Editor,

Chris Britt usually can be counted on to stick up for the little guy in his
editorial cartoons. However, his recent caricature of a medical cannabis
activist as some sort of unkempt, intoxicated oaf reveals a hard spot in an
otherwise soft heart. It's argumentum ad hominem at its worst directed
against sincere and courageous reformers.

If you compare Britt's caricature to a photograph of an actual medical
cannabis activist that appeared on the front page of the SJ-R just the day
before, you can see how wildly inaccurate and unfair the caricature really is.

When people are suffering -- not just from diseases like AIDS or epilepsy,
but also from myth-based drug laws that deny them the best care -- does it
really matter what anybody looks like or how they dress or even what their
particular drug of choice is?

Britt's stereotyping illustrates the malevolence behind the Controlled
Substances Act. In scheduling an arbitrary assortment of drugs for
prohibition, Congress has actually scheduled different sorts of people --
based on culture and appetite -- for unequal protection under the law. Even
if considered perfectly constitutional, it's nevertheless a foolish,
destructive, and hypocritical policy that has turned the "Land of the Free"
into the land of the most incarcerated people on Earth.

I suggest we replace the stereotyping and witch-hunting with compassion and
science and see if we don't all fare better for it.

Larry A. Stevens
Springfield