UNITED STATES SUPRESSES MARIJUANA

A classic question of morals, ethics and philosophy: Would you rather
be a righteous man in prison or an immoral man lavished with
accolades and riches?

This classic conundrum is quite evident today if you pay close
attention. For example, a group of nuns travel to the terrorist
training School of the Americas in Georgia each year to protest and
often get arrested. I would call them righteous prisoners.

Real life is usually less cut-and-dry than philosophy class and the
moral decisions we make are often heavily colored by the many
variables of our lives.

It may be at less personal expense for an artist, for example, to
stand up against the unjust marijuana laws than a college professor.

Indeed, in my research I have found a professor who caved in to the
pressure that seems to naturally oppress the righteous.

Then drug czar of the United States, Dr. Robert Dupont was a
righteous man who read the literature, knew the truth and acted on
it. Marijuana should be decriminalized, he declared.

Well Dupont, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, was besieged with soccer
moms armed with bongs bought at their corner stores and butts of
joints they found stashed by their clean-cut suburban kids.

What was probably the last straw for Dupont was the fact that
newspapers were now referring to him as the pot doc!

Dupont changed his ways and now is one of the most prominent
anti-drug zealots worldwide.

Another Harvard graduate took a different path. Rick Doblin learned
the truth about cannabis early on at the Kennedy school. He retold a
story of an early assignment where he and his team were given a
police department in Portland, Ore., to streamline.

Doblin insisted his team's submission state that the Portland police
resources could be better spent than on marijuana arrests. When their
submission was chosen as a model paper by the professor, he was no
longer afraid to stand by the truth.

Doblin started an organization called the Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Studies, a non-profit membership-based
research and educational organization that sponsors clinical studies
designed to obtain FDA approval.

Today the MAPS organization has studies going on with all kinds of
schedule-I drugs except one. One drug the U.S. government considers
far too dangerous to handle.

That plant substance is, you guessed it, marijuana.

Doblin's organization has been duking it out with the DEA for years
and years over this.

Ever since 1973, the DEA has used its immense power to stifle any
progress into marijuana medical testing while all the while claiming
marijuana should not be used medically since it hasn't been tested.
Very frustrating indeed.

It is hard to believe that we have to do all this just to be in a
position for people suffering from disease to use this medicine by
prescription. If it must be done, I am glad we have a guy like Doblin
to see it through.