LAW MAKES MARIJUANA LUCRATIVE

Your Jan. 14 editorial on Randolph County's record drug bust gives the
false impression that illegal immigrants are to blame for the presence of
marijuana in North Carolina.

Marijuana is arguably the state's No. 1 cash crop. According to the State
Bureau of Investigation, North Carolina "ranked fifth in the nation for
plants eradicated for the year 2001." There's a reason local farmers are
turning to illegal marijuana to make ends meet. The drug war's distortion
of immutable laws of supply and demand makes an easily grown weed literally
worth its weight in gold.

If health outcomes determined drug laws instead of cultural norms,
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. It can be harmful if abused, but criminal records are hardly
appropriate health interventions. Unfortunately, marijuana represents the
counterculture to misguided reactionaries intent on legislating their
version of morality.

In subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors, the U.S. government is
inadvertently subsidizing organized crime. The only clear winners in the
war on marijuana are drug cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs politicians
who've built careers on confusing drug prohibition's collateral damage with
a relatively harmless plant. Punitive marijuana laws have little, if any,
deterrent value.

The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study reports that
lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the United States than in any
European country, yet this is one of the few Western countries that uses
its criminal-justice system to punish citizens who prefer marijuana to
martinis. The big losers are the taxpayers who have been deluded into
believing big government is the appropriate response to nontraditional
consensual vices.

ROBERT SHARPE

Arlington, Va.

The writer is a program officer for the Drug Policy Alliance in Washington,
D.C.