PERSECUTIONS!

What exactly is the point of the seemingly never-ending persecution of
medical-marijuana activist Marvin Chavez (Matt Coker's A Clockwork Orange,
Aug. 30)? The 48-year-old Santa Ana resident originally got six years for
providing medical marijuana to undercover cops who used a fake doctor's
note. A cop commits fraud, and Chavez, guilty of compassion, is sentenced
to prison.

If punitive marijuana laws are intended to deter use, they've failed
miserably at doing so. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future
study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the U.S. than any
European country. Yet America is one of the few Western countries that uses
its criminal-justice system to destroy the lives of citizens who prefer
marijuana to martinis-or who use it as medicine. The only clear winners in
the war on some drugs are drug cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs
politicians. The big losers are American taxpayers.

Robert Sharpe

Drug Policy Alliance

Washington, D.C.