AFTER 5,000 YEARS, NOT ONE DEATH DUE TO MARIJUANA USE

Editor, The News:

Cannabis has no lethal dose and its pharmacological effects have never
caused a single death in more than 5,000 years of recorded history.

The (unseen) driving force against medical (or unrestricted adult)
legalization of cannabis is the fact that cannabis can't be patented.

This precludes the need for big business to be involved and that fact makes
cannabis commercially unattractive to the pharmaceutical, tobacco and
alcohol industries (lobbies).

It seems that if it can't be profitized successfully, the government can't
justify legalization even for the sick and dying.

Furthermore, the war on cannabis drives the war on drugs.

Without cannabis prohibition, the drug war would be reduced to a pillow
fight. This is the politics and the economics of cannabis prohibition.

Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the party
line of cannabis prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison
and military industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the "drug
treatment" industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the politicians
themselves, et al can't live without the budget justification, not to
mention the invisible profits, bribery, corruption and forfeiture benefits
that prohibition affords them.

The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement
policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are supposed
to be inalienable according to the U.S. constitution and bill of rights.

Myron Von Hollingsworth, Fort Worth, Tex.