WHAT'S WRONG WITH ANTIPOT LAWS

Kudos to Ronald Fraser for an excellent Friday guest opinion
("Antimarijuana laws at odds with public's views"). The drug war is
largely a war on marijuana, the most popular illicit drug. Punitive
marijuana laws have little, if any, deterrent value. The University of
Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study says lifetime use of marijuana
is higher in the United States than any European country, yet America
is one of the few Western countries that punishes citizens who prefer
marijuana to martinis.

Marijuana's short-term effects are inconsequential compared with the
long-term effects of criminal records. Unfortunately, marijuana
represents the counterculture to many. In subsidizing these
prejudices, the U.S. government is subsidizing organized crime. The
drug war's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand make an
easily grown weed worth its weight in gold.

The only clear winners are drug cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs
politicians who've built careers on confusing drug prohibition's
collateral damage with a relatively harmless plant. The big losers are
the taxpayers, who have been deluded into believing big government is
the appropriate response to nontraditional consensual vices.

Robert Sharpe

policy analyst

Common Sense for Drug Policy

Washington, D.C.