Pubdate: Tue, 21 May 2002
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)
Copyright: 2002 Richmond Newspapers Inc.
Contact:  http://www.timesdispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/365
Author: Robert Sharpe

MARIJUANA LAWS IGNORE SCIENCE

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

In his column on pain, A. Barton Hinkle argues that terminal cancer 
patients should be allowed to use medical marijuana if it helps relieve 
their symptoms. Unfortunately, a review of marijuana legislation would open 
up a Pandora's box most politicians would just as soon avoid. America's 
marijuana laws are based on culture and xenophobia, not science.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration 
during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical 
Association. 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 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. 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.

Robert Sharpe. Washington, D.C.
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