RELATIVELY HARMLESS

So Steve Tucker served a 10-year prison sentence for selling legal light
bulbs that could have been used to grow marijuana ("Forgotten man," Dec.
4). International drug cartels are the prime beneficiaries of our
government's misguided marijuana eradication efforts. As long as there is a
demand for marijuana, there will be a supply. Eliminating a local cottage
industry only to have it replaced by organized crime groups that also sell
cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is not necessarily a good thing.

Taxing and regulating marijuana, the most popular illicit drug, is a
cost-effective alternative to the $50 billion drug war. In Europe, the
Netherlands has successfully reduced overall drug use by replacing
marijuana prohibition with adult regulation. Dutch rates of drug use are
significantly lower than U.S. rates in every category. Separating the hard
and soft drug markets and establishing age controls for marijuana has
proven more effective than zero tolerance.

Here in the U.S. marijuana provides the black market contacts that
introduce consumers to hard drugs. This "gateway" is the direct result of a
fundamentally flawed policy. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown
to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of
tobacco. 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 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 some drugs
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.

- -- Robert Sharpe,

Program Officer, Drug Policy Alliance