GEORGE WILL AND MARIJUANA HYPOCRISY

Re: George Will's column, "Rocky Mountain High"

Mr Will's rant about Coloradoans who flout its medical marijuana law today
reminded me of prohibitionists' rants about Americans who continued to
drink after 1920, when National Prohibition (of alcohol) began.

In 1920, Americans began to suffer a curious epidemic of illnesses that all
required alcohol. "Medicinal alcohol" hypocrisy was as offensive to
prohibitionists then as "medical marijuana" hypocrisy is today. It was so
offensive that federal legislation required that industrial alcohol be
denatured by adding wood alcohol, acetone or benzene, and NOT labeling the
containers as poison.

Before we descend to that level, we can end the hypocrisy by doing what my
grandparents' generation did in 1933. Legalize, except this time lose the
ads, and use more of the resulting tax revenue to offer treatment to those
who ask.

John Chase

Palm Harbor, FL