MARIJUANA POSES LITTLE THREAT

In the otherwise excellent column "Of magic herbs" (The Daily Targum, April
22), Arden A. de la Cruz asks why American society deems marijuana so
loathsome, but never gets around to answering the question. If health
outcomes determined drug laws, marijuana would be legal. Unlike alcohol,
marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share
the addictive properties of tobacco.

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. An estimated 38 percent of Americans have now
smoked pot, according to Pew Research poll findings. 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. The direct experience of millions of Americans
contradicts the sensationalistic myths used to justify marijuana
prohibition.

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.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A. is a program officer at Drug Policy Alliance in
Washington, D.C.