WAR ON THC COMPARABLE TO WAR ON APPLES

Prohibition of any kind doesn't work, and that is because prohibition
is a regulation of morality.

It isn't finding justice, saving money or even keeping people from
hurting themselves. Prohibition is the censorship of morality and any
government body cannot be successful in that pursuit. The Temperance
Movement was a religious movement to drive out the evils of America.
At the time that evil was alcohol -- people weren't just opposed to
alcohol but also to apples -- which were almost exclusively grown to
make alcohol.

People started taking axes to apple trees all over the country and a
campaign was waged against the "devil's fruit." Luckily the war
against apples was never taken as far as the war against marijuana. I
am going to cover the reasons given why marijuana is illegal.

Marijuana is bad for your health, that's why it is illegal. Possibly
related:

Dr. Leslie Iversen has published a new book titled The Science of
Marijuana. Dr. Iversen, from Oxford University's department of
pharmacology, said in his book, "Cannabis is a safer drug than aspirin
and can be used long term without serious side effects." In his book
he said he found that many of the "myths" that surround marijuana use
- -- such as links to mental illness or infertility and extreme
addictiveness -- are not scientifically supported.

In fact, Iversen found cannabis was far less toxic than other drugs
like heroin, tobacco, cocaine and even alcohol.

Iversen writes, "By any standard, THC must be considered a very safe
drug both acutely and on long-term exposure."

He also found that "stoned" drivers posed less of a danger than drunk
ones. Iversen said the side effects of cannabis are as follows,
"cannabis does not cause structural damage to the brains of animals as
some reports had claimed, nor is there evidence of long-term damage to
the human brain or other, than slight residual impairments in
cognitive function after drug use is stopped." He also said the notion
that long-term cannabis use is harmful should finally be put to rest.

He said that a lot of the negative effects that come from marijuana
are a result of smoking the drug. Cannabis itself does not appear to
cause cancer and poses almost no threat of mortality.

Even compared with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory compounds, otherwise
known as aspirin -- which reportedly kills upwards of 16,000 people
annually according to the American Journal of Gastroenterology --
marijuana kills zero annually -- according to the Department of Justice.

Iversen is a member of the prestigious Royal Society, or the UK's
national academy of science, and his book is more than certainly going
to force the British government to reconsider the legal classification
of cannabis.

Marijuana is an evil that must be vanquished at any
price.

Most people don't know how much that fight really costs America. The
2008 FBI Uniform Crime Report stated that 44 percent of all funding
for the war on drugs is devoted to possession of marijuana and 6
percent is devoted to cannabis cultivation and sale. The total cost of
the war on drugs for 2008 was $13.7 billion, according to the Office
of National Drug Control Policy. The current request for funding the
war on drugs for this fiscal year has increased by 3.4 percent, or
$459 million.

So about half of all funding for the war on drugs, or about $6.85
billion, increases every year and is devoted to stopping marijuana
possession, cultivation and sale.

In contrast the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman has led
a group of 500 economists from Cornell, Stanford, and Yale in a
combined effort of calculation. They have estimated that legalization
of marijuana would generate about $6.2 billion a year in revenue even
in the current economic recession.

Marijuana legalization is only favored by drugged-out hippies and
nonfunctioning members of society.

Support of legalization of marijuana is no longer favored by a small
minority. A new Gallup poll shows that approval of the legalization of
marijuana is at an all-time high, with 44 percent of America in favor
of legalization. In the last 10 years, approval has steadily climbed
by more than 13 points.

The poll also detailed that people who would self-describe themselves
as liberal favored legalization by 78 percent. The government has made
marijuana illegal for a reason; it was a thought out and
well-researched decision.

This may not be as true as once, thought.

Richard Nixon started the war on drugs.

He commissioned a report on the dangers of cannabis to give scientific
data in support of making marijuana illegal.

This report was called the "The National Commission on Marihuana and
Drug Abuse." The commission, which was published March 22, 1972,
concluded, "Neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said
to constitute a danger to public safety." The commission's official
recommendation was that the possession of marijuana for personal use
should no longer be considered an offense and that distribution in
small amounts should no longer be considered illegal.

Even though Nixon had commissioned the report, the president and
Congress completely ignored the report.

Later, voice recordings came out of Nixon talking with former Gov.
Raymond Shafer of Pennsylvania, who chaired the 1972 marijuana study.
The recordings indicate that the president tried to "convince" the
governor to reject the commission's findings, saying, "You're enough
of a pro to know that for you to come out with something that would
run counter to what Congress feels ... and what we're planning to do
would make your commission just look bad as hell." Nixon in other
conversations had linked cannabis to the downfall of society.

The total cost of cannabis, staying classified as illegal, is
increasing annually. So why have we decided to spend so much time and
money on a plant? The more you start to research the prohibition of
pot the less things make sense, that is, until you look at other
things that have faced prohibition in America. Alcohol was drunk in
the form of hard apple cider in early colonial times because the
fermentation made it safer to drink than potentially dangerous well
water.

Cider was consumed not just in the afternoon but also with
breakfast.

In early America, there wasn't much that was more American than a pint
of hard cider.

But through the process of prohibition of alcohol we see why marijuana
is illegal. Because someone decided it should be, and a few
politicians have made careers of attacking this "threat." Like Nixon
and those after him, when evidence surfaced that cannabis use has no
real negative effects they spent money to fight it. We are now using
an extensive amount of our tax dollars on a war to fight a new
"devil's fruit," in a war that doesn't make much more sense than one
against apples.