DRUG LAWS ARE BASED ON FEAR

Unfortunately, a review of marijuana legislation would open up a Pandora's
box most politicians would just as soon avoid. North America's marijuana
laws are based on culture and xenophobia, not science.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration
during the early 1900s. An Edmonton woman writing under the pen name Janey
Canuck first warned Canadians about dread marijuana and its association
with non-white immigrants. The sensationalist yellow journalism of William
Randolph Hearst led to its criminalization in the United States.

Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been
counterproductive at best. Whites did not even begin to smoke marijuana
until a soon-to-be entrenched government bureaucracy began funding reefer
madness propaganda.

The reefer madness myths have long been discredited, forcing the drug war
gravy train to spend millions of tax dollars on politicized research,
trying to find harm in a relatively harmless plant.

The direct experience of millions of marijuana consumers contradicts the
sensationalistic myths used to justify marijuana prohibition. Illegal drug
use is the only public health issue wherein key stakeholders are not only
ignored, but actively persecuted and incarcerated.

In terms of medical marijuana, those stakeholders happen to be cancer and
AIDS patients.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A

Program Officer

Drug Policy Alliance, 15th Street, NW Washington, D.C.