CRIMINALS THE ONLY WINNERS IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

Dear Editor,

Your Jan. 8 editorial was right on target. 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.

The first marijuana laws were a racist reaction to Mexican migration during
the early 1900s. An Edmonton woman writing under the pen name Janey Canuck
first warned Canadians about dread marijuana and its association with
non-white immigrants. The yellow journalism of William Randolph Hearst led
to its criminalization in the United States.

Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been
counterproductive at best. Whites did not begin to smoke marijuana until a
soon-to-be entrenched government bureaucracy began funding reefer madness
propaganda. Over time marijuana has come to represent the counterculture to
misguided reactionaries intent on legislating their version of morality.

In subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors, government is
inadvertently subsidizing organized crime. The drug war's distortion of
immutable laws of supply and demand make an easily grown weed literally
worth its weight in gold.

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. Make no
mistake, punitive marijuana laws have little, if any, deterrent value.

Telling examples of drug war failure can be found very close to home. The
University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime
use of marijuana is higher in the U.S. than any European country, yet the
U.S. is one of the few Western countries that wastes resources punishing
citizens who prefer marijuana to martinis.

Robert Sharpe, Drug Policy Alliance, Washington, DC