IRRATIONAL PUNISHMENT

Re "Cruel and irrational: A 55-year sentence for selling a few joints'
worth?" (editorial, Nov. 19):

"Cruel and irrational" is apt description of the 55-year sentence given to
Weldon Angelos for selling two small packets of marijuana to an undercover
officer. It is time to rethink the failed policy -- marijuana prohibition
-- that produces punishments that make no rational sense.

As director of communications, Marijuana Policy Project, I ask why,
exactly, do we jail people who choose to unwind at the end of a day with a
joint rather than a martini? Marijuana is well documented to be less
addictive and less physically harmful than alcohol. Unlike liquor,
marijuana has never been documented to cause a fatal overdose.

If the idea is to curb marijuana use, prohibition has utterly failed.
Although marijuana arrests set an all-time record last year -- more than
three quarters of a million -- the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention recently reported that more teens currently smoke marijuana than
cigarettes. Legal regulation is working to keep kids off tobacco, and it
can do the same with marijuana.

Bruce Mirken, San Francisco