Pubdate: Tue, 18 Jan 2005
Source: Capital Times, The  (WI)
Copyright: 2005 The Capital Times
Contact:  http://www.captimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/73
Author: James McCamy
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

BLANCHARD'S VIEW OF POT IS TOO HARSH

Dear Editor: Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, in his Jan. 5 
guest column, is right to assert the facts and statistics in his argument 
against critics. However, I feel that his underlying moral reasons for 
prosecution and incarceration for drug offenses, specifically marijuana 
possession, are flawed.

He calls the sale of illegal substances a business that thrives off 
people's misery and destroys lives and neighborhoods. In the case of 
marijuana, or cannabis, this blanket statement does not apply.

It seems he fails to consider the fact that millions of people use cannabis 
therapeutically to treat a wide variety of serious conditions. In states 
like Wisconsin with no full medical marijuana laws, patients are often 
forced to buy their medicine on the black market. Such patients and their 
compassionate providers who understand its value as a medicinal herb do not 
deserve to be locked up.

He says that incarceration is the right punishment for those who seek to 
profit from the sale of potentially lethal substances. In fact, ingestion 
of marijuana has been directly responsible for zero deaths throughout 
recorded history, and no one has ever overdosed on it. I'm reminded of the 
phrase "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."

Today's war on drugs is responsible for tearing apart families because they 
choose a natural medicine. Fathers and mothers are imprisoned, and children 
and homes are taken simply for a plant that has proved false all of the 
propaganda to criminalize it. Mostly, what is destructive to the lives of 
individuals and their families are the laws.

James McCamy

Madison 
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