U.S. Government’s Marijuana Policy is Nonsensical

To the editors:



Regarding Juliet S. Samuel’s thoughtful op-ed of Oct. 10 (“Drug Policy? What Are You, High?”), the drug war is in large part a war on marijuana, by far the most popular illicit drug. Punitive marijuana laws have little, if any, deterrent value. The University of Michigan’s “Monitoring the Future” study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the United States than in any European country, yet America is one of the few Western countries that uses its criminal justice system to punish citizens who prefer marijuana to martinis. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to have caused 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 many Americans.

In subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors, the U.S. government is subsidizing organized crime. The drug war’s distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand makes 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 non-traditional consensual vices.



ROBERT SHARPE

Arlington, Va.

October 10, 2006



The writer is a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy.