"It would be sending the wrong message to our nation's children."
"Drug use would skyrocket." Those were the words of Gen. Barry
McCaffery speaking on medical marijuana initiatives in various states,
including California's Prop 215.

After the latest National Household Survey on Drug Abuse was released,
the general is eating his own words, though he's far too busy dreaming
up some other dead horse to whip. The survey showed a decline in
marijuana use among teens, despite "the message."

The news is a double-edged sword, of course. That teens are using less
marijuana is good news, but it is also bad news because of the fact
that teens are using more of the hard drugs like heroin.

Policies, like politics, often leave one to decide between the lesser
of two evils, and choosing heroin over marijuana is not the lesser of
two evils. Choosing stupidity and rhetoric over of rational policies,
is not the lesser of two evils. Choosing a "war" over "harm reduction"
is just plain ignorance.

Albert Einstein once said, "You cannot solve today's problems by using
the level of thinking that created them in the first place." Yet some
still believe that prohibition and imprisonment is the answer to a
complex problem. It isn't. If it were, 60 years of prohibition and
punitive measures would have wiped out drug use altogether.

Instead, we're left with a nation still choosing between two evils,
ignorance and stupidity. But who is paying the price? The thousands of
teenagers who have chosen heroin over marijuana, that's who.

The lesser of two evils is still evil, but marijuana is the creation
of God, heroin is the creation of man. Whom do you trust more with
your children?

JIM WHITE,
Oregon