AN INALIENABLE RIGHT TO SMOKE MARIJUANA?

Your June 2 pro-and-con columns about medical marijuana was a nice touch.

I think it is a sign of the times that here in the land of the free and the
home of the brave, a person becomes a criminal if he chooses to smoke a
plant that relieves pain and symptoms of illness. After all, we have a
government that is exporting democracy to the other side of the globe by
expending huge amounts of treasure and blood, but that same government does
not allow its own citizens to smoke a common plant to relieve pain or
illness. Yes, truth is stranger than fiction, and politicians routinely
tell lies.

If, at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a man suggested that the
proposed federal government should have the power to tell the citizens what
they may or may not ingest into their own bodies, that man would have been
laughed out of the room! Yet the entire drug prohibition is based upon that
absurd premise.

Kenric Ward's argument is nothing but a collection of old wives' tales and
government propaganda. His is sliding down the very slippery slope of the
position that a drug's legal status should be determined by its toxicity or
potential harm. If his argument is taken to its logical conclusion, then a
host of other drugs must be added to the list of contraband, including
alcohol, tobacco, aspirin, acetaminophen. In a good debate, that is a poor
position to be in.

Richard Sinnott, Fort Pierce