DRUG CZAR USES DISHONEST TACTICS

The Marijuana Policy Project has good reason to question drug czar John
Walters' use of tax dollars to conduct an illegal campaign against Question
9 ["Quit Blowing Smoke," May 1]. It's no coincidence that the drug czar
began his nationwide reefer madness revisited ad campaign just months
before a November election that featured numerous marijuana ballot
initiatives, the most ambitious being Nevada's Question 9. Among the more
dishonest ads were commercials linking the war on terror to the war on
drugs. The illicit drug of choice in America is domestically grown
marijuana, not Colombian cocaine or Afghan heroin.

The drug czar's misleading drug-terror propaganda may have led Nevadans to
mistakenly conclude that marijuana smokers are somehow responsible for the
tragic events of Sept. 11. That's likely no accident. Taxing and regulating
marijuana would render the drug war obsolete. As long as marijuana remains
illegal and distributed by organized crime, consumers will continue to come
into contact with hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. For obvious reasons,
government bureaucrats whose jobs depend on a never-ending drug war prefer
to blame the plant itself for the alleged "gateway" to hard drugs.

- --Robert Sharpe, M.P.A.

Program officer, Drug Policy Alliance

Washington, D.C.