MARIJUANA LAWS XENOPHOBIC

Letter to the editor

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency director Larry Bowers' questionable claim that
marijuana is a performance-enhancing drug may compel non-smoking
athletes to pick up the pipe. Lost in the debate over marijuana in
sports is the ugly truth behind marijuana prohibition. America's
marijuana laws are based on culture and xenophobia, not science.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration
during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical
Association.

White Americans did not even begin to smoke marijuana until a
soon-to-be entrenched government bureaucracy began funding reefer
madness propaganda.

Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been
counterproductive at best. According to your May 6 article, an estimated

47 percent of Americans have now smoked pot. The reefer madness myths
have long been discredited, forcing the drug war gravy train to spend
millions of tax dollars on politicized research, trying to find harm
in a relatively harmless plant.

Illegal drug use is the only public health issue wherein key
stakeholders are not only ignored, but actively persecuted and
incarcerated. In terms of medical marijuana, those stakeholders happen
to be cancer and AIDS patients.

Oregon patients may be protected, but medical marijuana providers
aren't.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has raided numerous medical
marijuana providers in states with compassionate-use laws. The very
same federal government that claims illicit drug use funds terrorism
is forcing sick patients into the hands of street dealers.

Apparently marijuana prohibition is more important than protecting the
country from terrorism. Students who want to help end the
intergenerational culture war, otherwise known as the war on some
drugs, should contact Students for Sensible Drug Policy at
www.ssdp.org.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A., Program Officer, Drug Policy Alliance