NO BIG DEAL

Thanks for printing Harold Kyriazi's piece "Good cop, bad cop,"
(Opinion&Commentary, April 9). It is a joy to read intelligent,
well-written free speech in a newspaper printed in the United States.

It is unrealistic to expect police, many of whom are young and
underpaid, to resist the corrupt behavior their authority and
firepower makes available to them. Cannabis enjoyers and cultivators
are an easy bust and the forfeiture loot is seductive. The cops are
just doing their job, however unethically.

The same cannot be said for federal officials, elected and appointed.
The elected get to where they are in life by pandering to the
corporate sources of the cash they so desperately need to be able to
compete for office. Both major parties are funded by the same pool of
loot. It really doesn't make much difference whom you vote for if he
is a "Republocrat." Both parties were bought long ago by the same
people/corporations. Consequently, the federal government is guilty of
the worst forms of fraud and subterfuge. While ostensibly the United
States is a "democracy," in reality it is a corporate plantation where
"democratically elected" politicians decree policy agreed upon by
global corporate powers. Cannabis is prohibited because the alcohol,
pharmaceutical, tobacco, etc., industries want it to be. It is an
easily grown plant that could displace the drugs they push and reduce
their profits.

Well, "the public be damned!" say the corporate lords. And we have.
The damnation is the "War on Select Drugs," which, statistically, is
the "War on Cannabis." Its DEA association with the refined and
concentrated substances heroin and cocaine is a convenient gambit to
obscure the fact that every major high-level study conducted during
the past century has concluded cannabis and its use is not a big deal
and that legal sanctions against its cultivation and responsible
enjoyment are not appropriate. Why has our government ignored and
suppressed the truth? Because its corporate sponsors want it to be.

John Colman-Pinning
Waldport, Ore.