MARIJUANA LAWS

I'm not surprised to read that armed robbers took over and robbed a
Berkeley medical marijuana club ("Armed Robbers Take Over Medical Marijuana
Club," June 7). Thanks to the drug war's distortion of supply and demand
dynamics an easily grown weed is practically worth its weight in gold.
Marijuana prohibition seems even more absurd when placed in a historical
context.

America's marijuana laws are based on culture and xenophobia, not science.
These days marijuana is confused with 1960s counterculture, but that wasn't
always the case.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican immigration
during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical
Association. Many 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 smoked
marijuana. 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 direct 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.

California patients may be protected, but Berkeley's medical marijuana
clubs aren't. Under the leadership of Attorney General John Ashcroft, the
federal government has conducted numerous paramilitary raids on medical
marijuana clubs.

For culture warriors like Ashcroft, enforcing outdated marijuana laws is
seemingly just as important as protecting the country from terrorism.

Robert Sharpe

Drug Policy Alliance