MARIJUANA HYPE

Re: Indoor pot-farming trend pushes into cottage country, Forester, October 23.

Another day, another warmed-over police press release served up by the
media to persuade us to support drug prohibition, a government program
intended to distract attention away from government failures in other
areas and to provide a measure of vicarious enjoyment for the white
and the non-poor by prosecuting the non-white and the poor.

Some things never change. Back in the 1930s, the following letter was sent
to Harry Anslinger, US Commissioner of Narcotics by the editor of the
Alamosa, Colorado Daily Courier:

"Is there any assistance your Bureau can give us in handling this
drug? Can you suggest campaigns? Can you enlarge your department to
deal with marijuana? Can you do anything to help us?

"I wish I could show you what a small marijuana cigarette can do to
one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That's why our
problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is
composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of whom are low mentality,
because of racial and social conditions.

"While marijuana figured in the greatest number of crimes in the past
few years, officials fear it, not for what it has done, but for what
it is capable of doing. They want to check it before an outbreak does
occur.

"Through representatives of civic leaders and law officials of the San
Luis Valley, I have been asked to write to you for help."

(Quoted in Organized Crime and American Power by Michael Woodiwiss,
page 223.)

I guess the media's bigotry and racism have become a tad more subtle
these days.

As far as marijuana goes, this racially-inspired crusade is getting a
bit silly. Marijuana is, for all intents and purposes, a legal drug.
The people have spoken. Millions of hard-working and productive
Americans and Canadians (white as well as black and brown) use the
stuff, including some, I don't doubt, on your staff. The police should
be told to stop wasting their time and our money pulling up plants and
do what we pay them to do: protect us from dangerous criminals.

Besides, why should the cops get their marijuana free while the rest
of us have to pay for it?

No government has the right to punish anyone for ingesting anything,
however harmful - yes, including heroin and other 'hard' drugs too,
so please stop reporting on the drug as if it were the most normal
thing in the world to jail people for what they choose to ingest into
their own bodies. Please wake up and begin reporting on drug
prohibition as the horror it is.

Alan Randall, Victoria, British Columbia