AMERICA WASTES RESOURCES ON WAR AGAINST MARIJUANA

Letter writer Brad Ling claims that drugs are illegal "to protect us." If
that were the case, the two deadliest recreational drugs, alcohol and
tobacco, would both be illegal. The drug war is, in large part, a war on
marijuana, by far the most popular illicit drug. The University of
Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime use of
marijuana is higher in the United States than any European country. Yet
America is one of the few Western countries that wastes resources punishing
citizens who prefer marijuana to martinis.

Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death,
nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. The short-term
health effects of marijuana are inconsequential compared to the long-term
effects of criminal records. Unfortunately, marijuana represents the
counterculture to misguided reactionaries in Congress intent on legislating
their version of morality. In subsidizing the prejudices of culture
warriors, the U.S. government is inadvertently subsidizing organized crime.

The drug war's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand make an
easily grown weed literally worth its weight in gold. The only clear
winners in the war on some drugs are drug cartels and shameless
tough-on-drugs politicians who've built careers on confusing drug
prohibition's collateral damage with a relatively harmless plant.

The big losers in this battle are the American taxpayers who have been
deluded into believing big government is the appropriate response to
non-traditional consensual vices. The results of a comparative study of
European and U.S. rates of drug use can be found at
http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/espad_pr.pdf or
http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/espad_pr.pdf.

ROBERT SHARPE Arlington, Va.

(Editor's note: Robert Sharpe is the program officer for the Drug Policy
Alliance, a nonprofit that works to promote drug policies based on common
sense, science and public health.)