SMOKING UP THE DEBATE ON POT

America: Stop messing with us. Your contradictions are resounding, your
ignorance is unbelievable and your stubbornness is unreasonable. How can
you continue to claim that you house the most free citizens in the world
when you continue to decide what we can put into our bodies?

Other nations are at least trying to open their eyes.

In Canada, a recent report released by the Canadian Senate Special
Committee on Illegal Drugs declared that cannabis should be legalized. In
England, possession of small amounts of marijuana is no longer an
arrestable offense.

In the United States, however, marijuana is still classified as a Schedule
I controlled substance, implying that it has no officially accepted
medicinal uses, has a high potential for abuse and has no safe level of use
under medical supervision. It sits on the same shelf that heroin, LSD and
peyote do, while cocaine and PCP are listed in Schedule II, allowing
doctors to prescribe them.

"What's happening is that most of the rest of the world is moving forward
much more rapidly than we are," said Bruce Mirken, director of
communications for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) based in Washington,
D.C. "The U.S. is increasingly alone. At a point it has to become obvious
that this doesn't make sense. The evidence becomes overwhelming if people
choose to look at it."

The crusading MPP is helping defend an initiative being placed on the
November ballot in Nevada that would decriminalize the possession of three
ounces or less of marijuana. It has the backing of the state's largest
law-enforcement group, the Nevada Conference of Police and Sheriffs, which
figures that decriminalizing the recreational use of the drug would free
officers to concentrate on more serious and life-threatening incidents.

Since 1986, nine states have passed legislation allowing the growth and use
of marijuana with a doctor's approval because marijuana alleviates side
effects of AIDS/HIV treatments and chemotherapy as well as symptoms
associated with Multiple Sclerosis and arthritis.

The basis of our so-called democracy o the Constitution o does not delegate
to the federal government the power to control marijuana or other drugs,
therefore reserving restrictions to the states as the 10th Amendment
mandates. Nevertheless, violent abuses of the system occur.

Abuses such as a brutal raid by 20 assault rifle-wielding Drug Enforcement
Agency officials on the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa
Cruz, Calif., that occurred on Sept. 5 despite the fact that the Santa Cruz
County Sheriff's Department deemed the organization in compliance with
state law.

The overdramatized fears surrounding marijuana are revealed in the
nightmare that is American history.

As more and more Mexican immigrants crossed the border following Mexico's
revolution in 1910, American prejudice and hatred toward them grew.
Eventually, police officers in Texas portrayed their common form of
intoxication o marijuana o as a catalyst for violent crimes, arousing a
"lust for blood" and giving its users superhuman strength.

Newspapers in New Orleans associated marijuana with African-Americans, jazz
musicians, prostitutes and underworld whites o the epitome of "un-American"
citizens.

Harry J. Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics
from 1930 to 1962 and an unabashed racist, first doubted the seriousness of
the problem but then quickly changed his mind, asserting in public
appearances and radio broadcasts that marijuana use led to killings, sex
crimes and insanity.

A 1936 movie called "Reefer Madness" included scenes of high school youth
smoking marijuana and immediately going insane, playing "evil" jazz music
and going on murder sprees.

It was madness that idiots actually believed this propaganda. The Marijuana
Tax Act was passed in 1937, making marijuana illegal throughout the United
States.

The bottom line is that marijuana was criminalized because of America's
itch to persecute individuals and protect private interests (hemp
threatened numerous big businesses, including William Randolph Hearst's
paper mills) and not because of scientific evidence. Here's the truth.

A 1999 study by the National Academy of Sciences found that the proportion
of users who become dependent on marijuana is 9 percent, far lower than
tobacco and alcohol, which have rates of 32 percent and 15 percent,
respectively.

The study also states that there is no evidence that marijuana "serves as a
stepping stone [to harder drugs] on the basis of its particular
physiological effect."

The study also shows that there is no evidence that it causes cancer in
humans, that earlier studies claiming changes occurred in the brain of
heavy marijuana users cannot be replicated with more sophisticated
techniques, and that there is no causal relationship between marijuana and
laziness.

The study explains that there is little evidence that decriminalization of
marijuana would lead to a substantial increase in its use.

Obviously, some information finds a way to stay hidden.

Furthermore, the effects of prohibition are incredibly harmful. Marijuana
purchased through criminal markets will never have a certification of
quality, therefore increasing chances of contamination with pesticides,
herbicides, fertilizers, molds, fungi, bacteria or other substances. It
also creates a mixed drug market that puts consumers in contact with
hard-drug dealers - acting as more of a gateway than marijuana could ever be.

And how many people are falling victim to the military-industrial complex
and its self-sustaining, corrupt practices?

According to a 2000 FBI report, 734,498 individuals were arrested in
connection with marijuana, the most ever. More disgusting is the fact that
88 percent of those cases were for possession, not sale or manufacture.

The reason is obvious o the National Drug Control Budget has swelled, going
from $1.65 billion in 1982 to $19.17 billion requested in 2002 and the MPP
estimates that the war on marijuana costs taxpayers $9 billion a year.

If marijuana is to be legalized, "the numbers for the drug war are going to
drop pretty dramatically," said Mitchell Earleywine, Ph.D. and associate
professor of Clinical Science at USC as well as author of "Understanding
Marijuana." "There are 6 million people using illicit drugs other than
marijuana, that's not enough to get billions and billions of national money."

There are even more victims when you consider that 1,941,796 American
children have at least one parent in custody on a drug charge, according to
an estimate made in December of 1999 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

"It's the drug war bureaucracy," Mirken said. "The military-industrial
complex sees everything as a justification for its continued existence."

Is our government really saving Americans and their children from the
horribly exaggerated effects of "evil marijuana," or is it simply a
combination of outdated-yet-lingering puritan values and big-business greed?

The most telling factor of all may be the fact that countries around the
world are recognizing the validity of marijuana legalization. Is our
government afraid that the truth will finally make its way to us "free"
citizens?