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To the Editor:

The Cumberland Times-News' thoughtful Feb. 13 editorial asked if it was
politically risky for Maryland politicians to support medical marijuana
legislation. If anything it's politically risky to oppose compassionate use
laws, which roughly 70 percent of Americans support. Not only should
medical marijuana be made available to 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
vocal 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. According to a Pew Research poll, 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 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.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A., Program Officer, Drug Policy Alliance