Marijuana laws ineffective

Seth Steinbacher (“Marijuana laws need to be reformed,… Marijuana laws ineffective

Seth Steinbacher (“Marijuana laws need to be reformed, not abolished,” April 10) makes the common mistake of assuming that punitive marijuana laws actually deter use. The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the United States than any European country, yet America is one of the few Western countries that use its criminal justice system to punish citizens who prefer marijuana to martinis. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco.

The short-term health effects of marijuana are inconsequential compared to the long-term effects of criminal records. Unfortunately, marijuana represents the counterculture to misguided reactionaries in Congress’ intent on legislating their version of morality. In subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors, the U.S. government is inadvertently subsidizing organized crime. The drug war’s distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand make an easily grown weed literally worth its weight in gold.

The only clear winners in the war on marijuana are drug cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs politicians who’ve built careers on confusing drug prohibition’s collateral damage with a relatively harmless plant. The big losers in this battle are the taxpayers who have been deluded into believing big government is the appropriate response to nontraditional consensual vices. 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.ssdp.org.

The results of a comparative study of European and U.S. rates of drug use can be found at www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/espad_pr.pdf.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A.

Program Officer

Drug Policy Alliance

Patriotism or indoctrination?

This preemptive U.S. attack on Iraq and the accompanying threat to Syria is the result of those who have succeeded in aims that utilize the Bush administration on behalf of the state of Israel. Few instances of U.S. military involvement since World War II pertained to defending democracy. What are defended are American arms merchants who play in a world game of nuclear roulette. In Bush’s urgent cause for democracy, and with Exxon Mobil being one of the major contributors to his campaign, was he pulling the strings in the attempted coup to oust the elected leader of Venezuela?

Has Sept. 11, 2001, left America limitless in exacting a revenge which obscures the root cause that precipitated its happening? Post-Sept. 11 America has a callous regard for human life, and the sabotage of our basic sensitivities has ensued. Americans today would not be shocked if the United States bombed Iraqi children as long as they were said to be relatives of Saddam Hussein. I am amazed at the comfort and ease demonstrated by news anchors speaking of bodies being removed from the rubble. There is no problem about the humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq as long as U.S. bombs succeeded in producing death and destruction, and the media can gloat over a triumphant America.

Have we as a nation crossed the line between patriotism and indoctrination? As we are so willingly stripped of our freedoms, is it our own country that teeters on the brink of becoming a police state? The war on Iraq, instead of preserving our liberty, is the means to lose it!

Thomas Daniels

Oakland