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Legalizing Marijuana Helps Health

Published: Monday, March 8, 2010

Updated: Monday, March 8, 2010

Dear Editor,

Regarding Robert Stutman’s Mar. 1st op-ed, if health outcomes determined drug laws instead of cultural norms, marijuana would be legal.

Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco.

Marijuana can be harmful if abused, but jail cells are inappropriate as health interventions and ineffective as deterrents.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican immigration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical Association. Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive at best.

White Americans did not even begin to smoke pot until a soon-to-be entrenched federal bureaucracy began funding reefer madness propaganda.

Marijuana prohibition has failed miserably as a deterrent.

The U.S. has higher rates of marijuana use than the Netherlands, where marijuana is legally available to adults over 18.

Students who want to help end the intergenerational culture war otherwise known as the war on some drugs should contact Students for Sensible Drug Policy at www.SchoolsNotPrisons.com.

Sincerely,

Robert Sharpe, MPA

Policy Analyst

Common Sense for Drug Policy

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3 comments Log in to Comment

Michelle Sommers
Tue Mar 9 2010 12:23
Its hipocracy that marajuana is illegeal, but alcohol is legal and even encouraged.
Johnny Green
Tue Mar 9 2010 11:47
Marijuana use itself is not that bad, it's the marijuana laws that are the problem. If someone chooses to consume marijuana, they should do it responsibly. The first step toward re-education on marijuana is getting people to realize what the current laws are. Depending on which state you are in, you can get jail time and hefty fines for just testing positive for marijuana or possessing a used pipe. Want to know what the marijuana laws are in your state? www.theweedblog.com to find out. There is lots of interesting stuff on that site.
malcolm kyle
Mon Mar 8 2010 14:57
Prohibition is a sickening horror and the ocean of human wreckage it has left in its wake is almost endless.

Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior which has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of past attempts at any form of drug prohibition would point most normal thinking people in the direction of sensible regulation. By its very nature prohibition cannot fail but create a vast increase in criminal activity, and rather than preventing society from descending into anarchy, it actually fosters an anarchic business model - the international Drug Trade. Any decisions concerning quality, quantity, distribution and availability are then left in the hands of unregulated, anonymous, ruthless drug dealers, who are interested only in the huge profits involved.

Prohibition ideology is based on lies and the 'War on Drugs' is a de facto 'war on people' (some might even successfully argue that it's a de facto race war). Prohibition has decimated generations and criminalized millions for a behavior which is entwined in human existence, and for what other purpose than to uphold the defunct and corrupt thinking of a minority of misguided, self-righteous Neo-Puritans and degenerate demagogues who wish nothing but unadulterated destruction on the rest of us!

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