SHOULD MARIJUANA BE A LEGALIZED DRUG?

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It's interesting to note that legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco
cause more problems - family, health and economic - than all the
illegal drugs combined.

There is a prevailing theory that the use of soft drugs, such as
marijuana, inevitably leads to the use of harder drugs such as heroin.

That same thought pattern helped lead to Prohibition, which of course
meant that no one would have alcoholic problems ever again. All that
produced was that a non-existen organization, the Mafia, got a
foothold in American society, which has since become emblazoned in
concrete.

And it seems to me that what we are now doing in maintaining the
illegality of grass and cocaine, etc., is exactly the same thing.

It is enabling the Columbian cartel and his offspring in this country
to flourish, endangering any who walk the streets at any given hour.

It also seems to me that if we were to legalize these drugs, the taxes
collected would go a long way toward retiring our national debt,
particularly since George W. decided to give our surplus to all his
good buddies. They would most certainly pay for universal healthcare.

Let's talk about grass for a bit. There has been for some time now a
strong movement to decriminalize this social drug. Many years ago in
New York, I attended a party for NORML, the National Organization to
Reform Marijuana Laws. It was hosted by that well-known purveyor of
radical thought, New York Republican Senator Jacob Javits.

It was their contention then, and still is, that the social use of
grass is harmful to no one, including the user.

It has been pretty well established that second hand smoke kills.
Second hand grass smoke, however, does nothing more than give one a
case of the giggles.

Alcohol in the home has been the source of many 911 calls to come help
because daddy is beating up mommy. With grass, the call might still go
through, but it would most likely sound like this: "Help, daddy is
eating everything in the fridge and there won't be anything left for
us kids for dinner."

I love to cook, but not when I have smoked grass. Everything tastes so
good I could throw a bunch of paper right out of the shredder into a
pot of boiling water and decide it is the best pasta dish I've ever
made.

I've had the opportunity to try many other drugs, but I pass. I'm
happy with the relaxed feeling I get from grass. Although once a
friend brought me some Tortolla mushrooms, called that because they
come from the British island of Tortolla. They taste awful, but 20
minutes later the moon did some fantastic things.

I tried again a few days later by sauteing the mushrooms in garlic
butter, salt and pepper and flambeaued in Grande Mariner. They tasted
like rotten oranges, so despite the show in the sky I gave up because
getting there is half the fun, and getting there with mushrooms was
quite the opposite.

Of course the potential for abuse exists, much as it does for alcohol,
but there is no cry today for the inclusion of alcohol on the illegal
list. We seem to have learned a lesson. If we eat too much fat we get
heart attacks or strokes and risk death. Shall we criminalize the
consumption of fatty foods? Of course not. Instead, we intelligently
try to educate. That is the key here. Decriminalize drugs and educate
and treat the addicted.

Illegal drugs are as available as legal drugs, so who are we kidding
other than ourselves?

We have long ago learned that the disease of alcoholism is genetic,
and other than knowing your family history, you won't know if you are
going to be an addict until it happens. Once again, it is the addicted
person who needs attention.

When I was 18 and in the Army, I was introduced to grass and smoked it
regularly for three years. Then I was discharged and went back to the
Juilliard School of Music where I studied violin and stopped smoking
because you can't smoke and work seriously any more than you can drink
and work seriously. So much for the addictive quality of grass.

It was, in fact some 25 years before I smoked again, and then it was
every evening instead of the usual martini after a hard day's work. It
went further toward relaxing me than booze ever did. You've noticed I
hope that alcohol is involved in at least 80 percent of all home cases
of abusiveness, grass is not.

The same statistics apply to DUI arrests. Booze, not grass, is the
offending intoxicant.

When I retired and moved from the islands to Felton, Calif., I found I
could no longer afford the luxury of a joint at night. So I am doing
without it. It has been almost seven years now, and that after some 11
years of daily smoking.

My family has a history of glaucoma and doctors in New York and
California have advised me that marijuana is helpful in this
situation. My wife suffers from something calls RLS (restless leg
syndrome), which is also calmed down by grass. It allows her to get a
good night's sleep. She, too, has been advised by doctors, including
neurologists, to indulge, and although our doctors are willing to give
us prescriptions for grass, we have turned them down because the feds,
in their infinite wisdom, claim they will arrest any doctor who does.

So I say legalize marijuana and sell it much the way liquor is sold,
only to those of age. Maybe we could even get the tobacco companies to
market it and preserve jobs. It would certainly cause less pain and
suffering than tobacco.