RIGHT ABOUT DRUG LAWS

To the editor:

Kudos to Bloomington physician Clark Brittain for making the case for
compassionate-use medical marijuana legislation. Not only should medical
marijuana be made available to patients in need, but marijuana prohibition
itself should be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis. Unfortunately, a
review of marijuana legislation would open up a Pandora's box most
politicians would just as soon avoid. 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. 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, Program Officer, Drug Policy Alliance, Washington, D.C.