WHY FIGHT MEDICAL MARIJUANA?

Our Wrongheaded System Prohibits What It Should Regulate

I am a retired deputy chief of police from Gainesville, Fla. My wife
and I have lived in Taos for 10 years. I am a member of Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition.

There have been front-page stories all over New Mexico about the
attorney general saying the feds might arrest and prosecute Health
Department employees who distribute medical marijuana. The production
and distribution of marijuana is still a crime at the federal level,
and that is something that state laws can't change, says Tom Riley,
spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

How wise is it to maintain a status quo that wasted tens of billions
of tax dollars each of the last 37 years? Fiscal responsibility is
often not compatible with government actions, but to spend $1
trillion in about 40 years on a policy that was a failure before it
was even implemented, with nothing positive - but plenty of negatives
- - to show for the money is criminal.

But the feds just will not stop: Your state legalized medical
marijuana? That's too bad. We're going to use our limited resources
and round up harmless distributors of medical pot while gangsters
engage in running gunbattles endangering the lives of countless bystanders.

Apparently spending billions of tax dollars around the world in the
war on drugs without any success just isn't enough. News articles
recently announced that we'll be sending tens of millions to Mexico
to help the country fight its war on drugs. The Mexican president is
determined to send military units to fight the cartels.

Articles earlier this year reported on how many Mexican police
officers had been corrupted by death threats and bribes. They also
mentioned how corruption was spreading within the military units
being sent to fight the cartels. So: Are we in a bidding war with the
Mexican cartels over who can bribe the most people? If so, we are
doomed to lose again.

Meanwhile, back at home. people who need marijuana for relief of
medical symptoms are caught between the proper fearfulness of the
state personnel required by law to administer to their needs and
White House drug czar John Walters, our very own modern Harry
Anslinger - see items 73 and 74 on the Web at:
http://csdp.org/publicservice/. Feel free to see more, but these two
are especially illuminating.

New Mexico is the most recent state to legalize medical marijuana -
not the last. The feds' pursuit of those violating federal laws but
not state laws is a waste of time, money and effort.

But the tide is turning, and eventually this version of prohibition
will come to an end, like the previous one, for much the same reason.

The government can't stop the flow of illegal drugs, because it
cannot end the demand. The tipping point will be reached when people
are tired of the abuses of civil rights by the criminal justice
system and by the continued endangerment of the nation's youths by
the maintenance of a black market system of drug distribution.

That's right - the person who decides what to sell, its purity,
strength and price is a criminal. That's also the person who decides
whether to sell to your children or grandchildren - a criminal.

Drugs are too dangerous to allow criminals to be in charge. Legalized
regulation, distribution and taxation will remove the criminals from
the equation. Not decriminalization - legalized regulation. There
will be less disease and death, less crime, less addiction and
billions of tax dollars for education and prevention programs.

Visit www.leap.cc and see what Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
has to say on the subject. Contact your congressional representatives
and senators, and tell them to just say no to continued prohibition.