TAKE MARIJUANA OFF THE FRONT LINES

I appreciate The Times of Acadiana publishing two outstanding letters
by Robert Sharpe (Letters to the Editor: Government misinforms On
Marijuana, Dec. 11) and Kirk Muse (Letters to the Editor: Marijuana's
History a Benign One, Dec. 11). Take marijuana out of the drug war.

The war on drugs today is mostly about marijuana. Marijuana arrests,
convictions, incarcerations and the seizure of property in marijuana
cases constitute the great majority of "drug-war incidents." Without
marijuana prohibition, the War on Drugs and its bloated budgets would
simply not be justifiable, nor the DEA, nor foreign intervention, nor
political anti-drug posturing; without marijuana prohibition the whole
War on Drugs would soon fall apart.

America is in the throes of an addiction, to be sure. But it is to
drug prohibition far more than to drug use. Enormous and wildly
increasing budgets are squandered on ever-higher doses of the drug
prohibition habit, and vehement denials that the prohibition habit is
the problem are heard along with pronouncements that with one more big
fix of "enforcement and interdiction" the drug problem will be
resolved. And in great irrational fear of the imagined rigors of
withdrawal, the addict is ready to commit any disgrace, deception,
crime or doublethink whatsoever to get his fix. Drug prohibition has
become a "monkey on the back" of democracy itself.

Larry Seguin

Lisbon, N.Y.