IT'S TIME FOR A SENSIBLE POLICY ON MARIJUANA

To the editor:

Lost in the ongoing debate over Nevada's medical marijuana law is the
ugly truth behind marijuana prohibition. If health outcomes instead of
cultural norms determined drug laws, marijuana would be legal. Alcohol
kills an estimated 110,640 Americans each year. Marijuana has never been
shown to cause an overdose death.

The first marijuana laws were a racist reaction to Mexican laborers
taking jobs from whites during the early 1900s, passed in large part due
to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst's sensationalist yellow
journalism. These days marijuana is confused with '60s counterculture by
Americans who would like to turn the clock back to the 1950s. This
intergenerational culture war does far more harm than marijuana.

As the most popular illicit drug, marijuana provides the black-market
contacts that introduce users to hard drugs like heroin. This "gateway"
is the direct result of a fundamentally flawed policy. It makes no sense
to waste tax dollars on failed drug policies that finance organized
crime and needlessly expose children to dangerous drugs.

In Europe, the Netherlands has successfully reduced overall drug use by
replacing marijuana prohibition with regulation. Dutch rates of drug use
are significantly lower than U.S. rates in every category. Separating
the hard and soft drug markets and establishing age controls for
marijuana has proven more effective than zero tolerance. Drug policy
reform may send the wrong message to children, but I like to think the
children themselves are more important than the message.

Robert Sharpe, Washington, D.C.

The writer is M.P.A. program officer with The Lindesmith Center-Drug
Policy Foundation ( http://www.drugpolicy.org ).