DECRIMINALIZE POT

This decades-long experiment in social and cultural self-destruction
via police-state neo-prohibition, aka "the war on drugs" must end,
especially regarding marijuana.

We can try state initiatives like Proposition 19, but better yet,
let's pass legislation properly reclassifying marijuana from schedule
one to schedule five, or just declassify it completely.

It's really that simple to do, but politically difficult for our
weak-willed mainstream politicians.

In Schedule I, the drug or other substance must have a high potential
for abuse, which marijuana doesn't compared to legal alcohol, meeting
the Schedule V definition of low potential for abuse relative to the
substances in schedules I-IV.

In Schedule I, drugs have no currently accepted medical use in
treatment and lack accepted safety protocol for use under medical
supervision; clearly both of these stipulations have long been
inapplicable to marijuana which conforms to the schedule V definition
of accepted medical uses.

For proof, one need only ask a dying hospice patient, whose lucidity
is retained while their medical complications are assuaged by
marijuana, but not by morphine.

Let's decriminalize, regulate and tax marijuana; pardon all nonviolent
marijuana inmates so real criminals aren't being released; and regain
community respect for law enforcement.

Ed Chainey

Richmond