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Letter to Editor: Hypocrisy of prohibition
By Hempology | July 12, 2007
Metrowest Daily News, MA
10 Jul 2007
THE MARIJUANA CARTEL
Kathleen Parker’s July 8th column was right on target. Marijuana prohibition has done little other than burden millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens with criminal records.
The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the U.S. 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. The short-term health effects of marijuana are inconsequential compared to the long-term effects of criminal records.
Unfortunately, marijuana represents the counterculture to many Americans. In subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors, government is 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 confusing drug prohibition’s collateral damage with a relatively harmless plant. The big losers in this battle are the taxpayers deluded into believing big government is the appropriate response to non-traditional consensual vices.
The results of a comparative study of European and U.S. rates of drug use can be found at:
http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/espad_pr.pdf
and United Nations stats:
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/global_illicit_drug_trends.html
ROBERT SHARPE,
Policy Analyst, Common Sense for Drug Policy, Washington, D.C.
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