ASHCROFT IS BIGGEST OBSTACLE BETWEEN WERNER, POT CLUB

The biggest obstacle to Pierre Werner's vision of a compassionate-use
medical marijuana club ["Las Vegan looks to create Nevada's first cannabis
club," March 6] is John Ashcroft. By raiding voter-approved medical
providers in California, the very same attorney general who 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.

Ashcroft's taxpayer-funded marijuana jihad has no basis in science. 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 health
outcomes. 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.

An estimated 38 percent of Americans have 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. The direct experience of millions contradicts the
sensationalistic myths used to justify marijuana prohibition.

- -Robert Sharpe

Drug Policy Alliance

Washington, D.C.