MARIJUANA PROHIBITION NOT BASED ON SCIENCE

Section 11 of the Cannabis Control Act (see City Shorts, River Cities'
Reader Issue 378, June 12, 2002) allows eligible Illinois patients to
legally use medical marijuana, providing they obtain written approval from
the Illinois State Police. Do Illinois police possess the medical
qualifications necessary to supervise doctor patient relationships?

Not only should medical marijuana be made available to cancer and AIDS
patients in need, but marijuana prohibition itself should be subjected to a
thorough cost-benefit analysis. Unfortunately, a review of marijuana
legislation would open up a Pandora's box most politicians would just as
soon avoid.

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 despite opposition from the American
Medical Association. White Americans did not even begin to smoke marijuana
until a soon-to-be-entrenched government bureaucracy began funding
reefer-madness propaganda.

Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been
counterproductive at best. An estimated 38 percent of Americans have now
smoked pot. 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. Meanwhile,
research that might demonstrate the medical efficacy of marijuana is
consistently blocked.

The experience of millions of Americans 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.

Additional background information:
(http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/history.htm) and PEW Research
poll findings (http://www.people-press.org/reports/print.php3?PageID=122).

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A.

Program Officer, Drug Policy Alliance http://www.drugpolicy.org/

Washington, D.C.