HEMP ENFORCEMENT JUST ANOTHER

So the Drug Enforcement Administration has decided to get tough on hemp
pretzels, snack bars and veggie burgers (The NEWS, Jan. 7). The timing is
bizarre to say the least. Now that America faces the all-too-real threat of
international terrorism, the misguided efforts of government bureaucrats to
shut down legitimate businesses like the Ohio Hempery are a gross misuse of
tax dollars.

Prior to the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, few Americans had
heard of marijuana, despite widespread cultivation of its non-intoxicating
cousin, industrial hemp. America's marijuana laws are the result of racist
yellow journalism, not health outcomes. Reefer madness hysteria followed a
wave of Mexican migration during the early 1900s. Incredibly violent acts
were allegedly committed by minorities under marijuana's influence. At the
time few white Americans had even heard of marijuana, much less smoked it.

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. For a drug that has never been shown to cause an overdose
death, the allocation of resources used to enforce marijuana laws is
outrageous.

Adding non-intoxicating hemp products to the intergenerational culture war
otherwise known as the war on some drugs is an unwelcome expansion of the
$50 billion drug war gravy train.

Additional history: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/HISTORY.HTM

Pew Research poll findings: http://www.people-press.org/drugs01que.htm

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A. Program Officer

The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation

Washington, D.C