LETTER OF THE WEEK

BRIDGES FAIL WHILE WE FOCUS ON MARIJUANA

By Gary Storck

News reports say nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars is needed to
fix structurally deficient U.S. bridges and highways but that states
and the federal government have been unable or unwilling to come up
with the money.

While ensuring the safety of our nation's infrastructure has become a
luxury we can't afford, there is always more money to pour down the
bottomless pit of marijuana prohibition. Even cancer and multiple
sclerosis patients are fair game.

Thursday, Aug. 2, marked the 70th anniversary of the date President
Franklin Roosevelt signed the Marijuana Tax Act into law. Ruled
unconstitutional in 1969, marijuana prohibition was continued under
the 1971 Controlled Substances Act.

While alcohol prohibition only lasted 14 years, marijuana prohibition
is 70 and going strong. Seventy years of ceaseless reefer madness
propaganda has so demonized cannabis that most elected officials
stipulate to this absurd ideology without question, when taxing and
regulating marijuana could solve numerous problems while generating
revenue instead of wasting it.

Seventy years of lying about marijuana is too long, and it has made a
mockery of American values like personal freedom and privacy, and
encouraged disrespect for the law. The government should make no
laws that tell us what we can or cannot put in our own bodies. Taxing
and regulating marijuana is the only sensible option.

Gary Storck, co-founder Madison NORML

Pubdate: Thu, 09 Aug 2007

Author: Gary Storck

Source: Wisconsin State Journal (WI)