RESPONSE TO OFFICIAL

Andrea G. Barthwell, a deputy despot from the office of the drug czar,
shows up to propagandize, and the Press Journal follows along, calling all
dissenting information "myths."

Cannabis was in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia until 1940, when it was stuffed down
George Orwell's memory hole by one of Barthwell's predecessors.

The office of the drug czar commissioned the Institute of Medicine to
report on cannabis. In 1999 they reported that it does indeed have
significant medical uses.

As with alcohol, prohibition is not the way to regulate anything.
Prohibition yields up control of the market to the criminal underworld.
District attorneys consistently upgrade charges against users to the status
of distributors, and the prisons are indeed full of casual users.

If everything that is not harmless were to be prohibited, what a clearly
authoritarian state we would have. Were users of the addictive substances
coffee, nicotine, and alcohol imprisoned at the rate of cannabis users, the
revolt would be immediate.

Wise up America, LEGALIZE.

Jay Bergstrom,

Kernville, Calif.