Pubdate: Tue, 11 Jun 2002
Source: Daily Californian, The (CA Edu)
Copyright: 2002 The Daily Californian
Contact:  http://www.dailycal.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/597
Author: Robert Sharpe

MARIJUANA LAWS

I'm not surprised to read that armed robbers took over and robbed a 
Berkeley medical marijuana club ("Armed Robbers Take Over Medical Marijuana 
Club," June 7). Thanks to the drug war's distortion of supply and demand 
dynamics an easily grown weed is practically worth its weight in gold. 
Marijuana prohibition seems even more absurd when placed in a historical 
context.

America's marijuana laws are based on culture and xenophobia, not science. 
These days marijuana is confused with 1960s counterculture, but that wasn't 
always the case.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican immigration 
during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical 
Association. Many 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. An estimated 38 percent of Americans have smoked 
marijuana. 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.

California patients may be protected, but Berkeley's medical marijuana 
clubs aren't. Under the leadership of Attorney General John Ashcroft, the 
federal government has conducted numerous paramilitary raids on medical 
marijuana clubs.

For culture warriors like Ashcroft, enforcing outdated marijuana laws is 
seemingly just as important as protecting the country from terrorism.

Robert Sharpe

Drug Policy Alliance
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