DEVELOP SENSIBLE DRUG POLICY

I recently received a newsletter in the mail from the Pima County Sheriff's
Department, called "Community Connection." It dealt with an initiative
slated for the November ballot, called "The Drug Initiative 2000," which
makes the use of marijuana more of a personal or medical issue, rather than
a law enforcement issue.

The focus of the newsletter was to offer blatant propaganda against this
rational initiative. I am displeased my tax money is being used in this
politically motivated propaganda campaign. What gives the Sheriff's
Department the right to spend our money in this fashion?

Why do legislators and law enforcement officials believe they are better
able to make medical decisions related to drug prescribing than doctors?
Why should someone who will benefit from the medical use of marijuana
suffer on account of some uneducated lawmaker's "tough-on-crime" posturing?

I am in favor of any initiative that would decriminalize marijuana, which
is far less harmful than "legal" drugs, like alcohol and tobacco. Most
illegal drugs need to be decriminalized. Incarcerating for possession and
sale of drugs is costing this country billions of dollars annually, yet
street drugs are every bit as available as they ever were.

Drug use or drug addiction is simply a vice, not a crime. A society cannot
effectively legislate against a vice. America's 80-year attempt to control
drugs (since the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1916) has failed in every
respect, other than to promote a huge, multi-billion dollar "Prison
Industrial Complex" and visit untold misery upon inmates and their
families.

Drug use has to be dealt with, but a policy needs to be developed that is
not based on hysteria (what we currently have), but upon sound medical and
sociological research.

Jim Beattie