DRUGGED PROPAGANDA

We need more journalists like Bill Steigerwald ("Czar Wars," Opinion and
Commentary, Nov. 17).

The propaganda of Drug Czar John Walters rarely gets
the scrutiny it deserves. To hear it from Walters, more Americans are in
treatment for marijuana than alcohol and all illegal drugs combined. The
drug czar is deliberately misrepresenting government data in an effort to
justify the war on some drugs.

Record numbers of Americans arrested for
marijuana possession have been forced into treatment by the criminal
justice system. The resulting distortion of treatment statistics is then
used by the drug czar to make the claim that marijuana is "addictive."

Zero-tolerance drug laws do not distinguish between occasional use and
chronic abuse. The coercion of Americans who prefer marijuana to martinis
into taxpayer-funded treatment centers says a lot about government
priorities, but absolutely nothing about the relative harms of marijuana.

Canada's Senate recently concluded that marijuana is relatively benign,
marijuana prohibition contributes to organized crime and law enforcement
has little impact on patterns of use. In the words of Sen. Pierre Claude
Nolin, "Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is
substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a
criminal issue but as a social and public health issue."

Robert Sharpe, Washington, D.C. The writer is program officer for the Drug
Policy Alliance.