MARIJUANA LAWS BASED ON CULTURE, NOT SCIENCE, FACT

EDITOR: The following letter is written in response to the Dec. 20 letter
written by Kurt B. Zengler, Lincoln County assistant district attorney:
Lost in the debate over the Marathon County ordinance that allows those
caught with small amounts of marijuana to be penalized with a fine instead
of a criminal charge is the ugly truth behind marijuana prohibition. 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 1900's, despite opposition from the American Medical
Association. White Americans did not even begin to smoke marijuana until
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 that spends 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 use, those stakeholders happen to be cancer and AIDS patients.

Robert Sharpe, program officer, Drug Policy Alliance, Washington, D.C.