COMMON MISTAKE

(Re: "Legalize It? Yes or No?," cover story, April 16.) John J.
Coleman makes the common mistake of assuming that punitive marijuana
laws actually reduce use. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the
Future Study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the
United States than any European country, yet America is one of the
few Western countries that still criminalizes citizens who prefer
marijuana to martinis. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown
to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive
properties of tobacco. The short-term health effects of marijuana are
inconsequential compared to the long-term effects of criminal records.

Unfortunately, marijuana represents the counterculture to many
Americans. In subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors,
government is subsidizing organized crime. The drug war's distortion
of immutable laws of supply and demand causes big money to grow on
little trees. The only clear winners in the war on marijuana are drug
cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs politicians who've built careers
confusing drug prohibition's collateral damage with a relatively
harmless plant. The big losers in this battle are the taxpayers who
have been deluded into believing big government is the appropriate
response to non-traditional consensual vices.

Robert Sharpe, MPA/Washington, DC