MARIJUANA NEEDS TO BE LEGALIZED

Re: "Legalizing pot would multiply the misery" (My View, March 30).

I just can't let a column like Bruce Grant's regarding pot
legalization go by without comment.

Now, smoking marijuana is probably not the best thing a person can do,
but to compare pot to the truly addictive, debilitating drugs
associated with the "terrible human toll" of drug abuse, which
inflicts "staggering monetary costs" due to crime, incarceration,
property damage and adverse health outcomes, cannot go
unchallenged.

It is simply disingenuous and/or amazingly ignorant to think that pot
is in any way as dangerous as, say, heroin, meth, crack cocaine or
oxycodone, etc., in terms of the potential for abuse. The simple fact
is that the criminalization of marijuana, with the resulting threat of
arrest, incarceration and loss of employment, is the only ill effect
that any user will potentially ever be faced with.

The Florida Office of Drug Control is paid for by the taxpayers of
Florida. I can only hope that one day the people in charge of drug
policy in Florida, and elsewhere, will take an objective, critical,
clear-eyed look at the counter-productive, abusive, corrupt, failed
"war on drugs" with regards to marijuana, and decriminalize this mild,
nonaddictive drug for the adult, taxpaying citizens of this country.

William Becker