MARIJUANA TOPIC FEEDBACK

Thanks for the two columns "Get Up, Stand Up For Mary Jane" by Sarah Asti
and "Marijuana Laws A Matter For The State" by Charlie Wade. Both writers
(and the DA) are to be commended for providing your readers with some
common sense on the cannabis issue. As Wade points out, ganja's illegality
was born from the wiles of a career bureaucrat with problems of bigotry
(Anslinger). And as Asti demonstrates, there is much-state to-state
disparity on cannabis law. The problem with the U.S. war on drugs is that
not only is it counterproductive, but is also an essentially anti-American
policy, primarily because of its racist and illogical origins.

Our drug policies have made the United States the world's new gulag.

Where our nation once could point to the former Soviet Union and say "bad
on you" because of its propensity for incarceration, we are the world's
leader in both total and per capita imprisonment - because of the war on
drugs. The same problems that plagued us because of alcohol prohibition
early in the 20th century exist today in greater magnitude in the new and
improved Prohibition II. Corruption of law enforcement at all levels,
outrageous tax-free profits made by thugs and gangsters who control the
supply of illicit substances, and an increase in underage consumption make
current policies a bane to our nation's experiment in liberty. The Daily
Athenaeum would do its readers a service by digging deeper into the den of
lies and deceit that make up current drug "control" policies.

Allan Erickson

Citizen