A BAD RULING

The Supreme Court should take a cue from the nonsensical banner that
inspired its recent decision limiting student free speech ("Freedom
abridged" editorial, TimesDaily, June 26). It might do them some good
to take a few bong hits for Jesus.

Before sacrificing any more civil liberties at the altar of the drug
war, they should ask themselves, what would Jesus do? Would Jesus
persecute, incarcerate and deny forgiveness to nonviolent drug
offenders? Zero tolerance is decidedly unChristian. Morally, the drug
war is wrong. On a practical level, the drug war is a complete failure.

There were 786,545 marijuana arrests in 2005, the vast majority for
simple possession.

America is one of the few Western countries that punishes citizens who
prefer marijuana to martinis, yet lifetime use of marijuana is higher
in the U.S. than any European country.

Thanks to the war on some drugs, the land of the free now has the
highest incarceration rate in the world. Yet the drug war has failed
to keep drugs out of prisons, much less schools. This is not a policy
worthy of Constitutional exemptions.

The Supreme Court should prioritize protecting civil liberties over
perpetuating drug war.

The results of a comparative study of European and U.S. rates of drug
use can be found at: monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/espad-pr.pdf. MTF is
funded with U.S. government grants.

United Nations statistics may be found at
unodc.org/unodc/global-illicit-drug-trends.html.

Marijuana arrest statistics may be found at drugwarfacts.org/marijuan.htm.
Direct links to FBI source materials can be found on this Web page.

ROBERT SHARPE

Policy Analyst

Common Sense for Drug Policy

Washington, D.C.