READ THE POT RESEARCH

Re. 'Revisit pot law,' June 29 editorial:

Your editors got it partly right. Marijuana prohibition should be
repealed. There is no real question about that.

The part they got wrong was the supposed "dearth" of evidence. Your
editors should review the Major Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy at
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer. The collection includes the full
text of most of the major government commission reports from around
the world over the last 100 years. If your editors will read them,
they will find that there is no "dearth" of evidence and never has
been. They will also find that every commission reached remarkably
similar conclusions.

In 1973, President Nixon's U.S. National Commission on Marihuana and
Drug Abuse completed the largest study of the drug laws ever done. At
the end of their research, they said that the real drug problem was
not marijuana, or heroin, or cocaine.

The real drug problem, they said, is the ignorance of public
officials who have never bothered to read the most basic research.

Read the research. Then ask any elected official if they can even
name any of these government commission reports. You won't find a
single one of them who has laid eyes on any of them. The real problem
is ignorance -- and, in many cases, the ignorance is deliberate.

Clifford A. Schaffer, director

DRCNet Online Library of Drug Policy

Agua Dulce, California