SUPREME COURT DECISION SHOWS MISPLACED PRIORITIES

To the Editor:

Regarding Alex Kreit's Commentary "'Bong Hits' for Student Speech"
(Aug. 29, 2007):

The U.S. Supreme Court should take a cue from the nonsensical banner
"Bong Hits 4 Jesus" that inspired its decision to limit student free
speech. It might do the justices some good to take a few bong hits for
Jesus.

Before sacrificing any more civil liberties at the altar of the drug
war, they should ask themselves: What would Jesus do? Would Jesus
persecute, incarcerate, and deny forgiveness to nonviolent drug
offenders? Zero tolerance is decidedly un-Christian.

Morally, the drug war is wrong. On a practical level, the drug war is
an abject failure. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
there were 786,545 marijuana arrests in 2005, the vast majority for
simple possession. America is one of the few Western countries that
punish citizens who prefer marijuana to martinis, yet lifetime use of
marijuana is higher in the U.S. than in any European country,
according to the study "European School Survey Project on Alcohol and
Drugs," released in 2001.

Thanks to the war on some drugs, the U.S. Constitution is increasingly
irrelevant, and the land of the free now has the highest incarceration
rate in the world. This is not a policy worthy of constitutional
exemptions. The drug war has failed to keep drugs out of prisons, much
less schools. The Supreme Court should prioritize protecting civil
liberties over perpetuating drug-war failure.

Robert Sharpe,

Policy Analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy,

Washington, D.C.