RAIDS ON POT GROWERS A WASTE OF TAXPAYERS' MONEY

To the editor:

It's late summer and the marijuana plants are ripening and the Marijuana
Eradication Team is busy flying seek and destroy missions over the
state. Your tax dollars at work, subsidizing the growers who do not get
caught with the remarkably high price of $240 to $320 dollars an ounce for
flowers! To justify the cost of helicopters roaming our skies at low
altitude and ground eradication squads roaming our open fields, the
spokesman for the District Attorney's office recites the usual unfounded
claims about marijuana being a "gateway drug," "is more potent" and
therefore dangerous - so dangerous just look at all the children in treatment.

As for the "gateway" argument, while it is true that "marijuana use
precedes hard drug use as RAND researchers reported in a 2002 article,
"Reassessing the Marijuana Gateway Effect," that the reason is
"simply because opportunities to use marijuana come earlier in life than
opportunities to use hard drugs." As for the potency, there have always
been very potent strains of marijuana, yet even if on average today's
commodity is more potent, it is like saying whiskey is more potent than
beer, it is meaningless to the policy debate. Finally as to the numbers of
persons in treatment for marijuana, it is because they are ordered into
treatment by the Courts. According to the federal Drug and Alcohol
Services Information System, 58 percent of all marijuana admissions are
through the criminal justice system. Legalizing, taxing and regulating
this agricultural commodity used in the past month by about 10 percent of
Essex County's adult population, while prohibiting it to children as we do
tobacco and alcohol, is the only policy consistent with securing the
Constitution's promised Blessings of Liberty.

Steven S. Epstein

Georgetown (Editor's note: Steven Epstein, an attorney, is the founder of
the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition and has long been active in
the effort to loosen the laws regarding marijuana use.)