CANNABIS PROHIBITION PARADOX

RECENT ARTICLES in the ODT have highlighted the paradoxical nature of
cannabis prohibition. Dunedin police, for example, claimed to have
insufficient resources to deal with J-Day protesters smoking cannabis in
their station (ODT, 5.5.03 and 6.5.03), yet they, and the courts, deemed it
necessary to further devastate the lives of a couple who turned to cannabis
in desperation for relief from a debilitating illness (ODT, 13.5.03). Your
court news frequently carries reports of other medical cannabis users who
suffer similar fates.

Furthermore, the assertion that medical science is "only just beginning to
appreciate the huge therapeutic potential" of what may be "the aspirin of
the 21st century" (ODT, 22.05.03) not only lends credibility to the claims
of cannabis' medical benefit, it also shows the degree to which the truth
about it has been suppressed. At the hearings of the 1937 Marijuana Tax
Act, the American Medical Association's representative prophesied that the
Act would "deprive the public of the benefits of a drug that on further
research may be of substantial value". Even those sponsoring the Act
recognised that cannabis had "valuable industrial, medical and scientific
uses".

While smoking cannabis may not be, as your editorial noted (ODT, 9.5.03), a
"crime of the century", the relentless persecution of those who find
benefit from using this remarkable herb is merely the modern equivalent of
witch burning or the Inquisition, and requires the same fallacious
reasoning necessary to believe that the world was flat and the centre of
the universe.

Jason Baker-Sherman, Dalmore

[Abridged. - Ed.]