DRUG POLICY IS ANTIQUATED

I hope Niki Payne is right in her Dec. 11 Daily Forty-Niner article
about Barack Obama's potential for leadership.

With the exception of Dennis Kucinich on the left and Ron Paul on the
right, drug policy reform is conspicuously absent from the
presidential campaign. Most candidates are all too willing to jail
citizens for consensual vices they themselves once engaged in.

After allegedly not inhaling, [former Pres. Bill] Clinton went out of
his way to prove his tough-on-some-drugs credentials. An admitted
former problem-drinker and alleged illicit drug user, Bush has gone
so far to as to arrest cancer and AIDS patients in states with
voter-approved medical marijuana laws.

This drug war nonsense has gone on long enough. These days, zero
tolerance poses a greater threat to youth than drugs. According to
the "Monitoring the Future" survey, 48 percent of U.S. high school
seniors have tried an illicit drug. Denying half the nation's youth
an education is not in America's best interest.

Most kids outgrow their youthful indiscretions involving illicit
drugs, some even going on to become president. An arrest and criminal
record, on the other hand, can be life-shattering. Students who want
to help end the intergenerational culture war, otherwise known as the
war on some drugs, should contact Students for Sensible Drug Policy
at www.SchoolsNotPrisons.com

- -- Robert Sharpe, MPA policy analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy
Washington, D.C.