Pubdate: Wed, 13 Dec 2000
Source: Galveston County Daily News (TX)
Copyright: 2000 Galveston Newspapers, Inc.
Contact:  PO Box 628, Galveston TX 77553
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Author: Jerry Epstein, http://www.drugsense.org/epstein/
Jerry Epstein is a co-founder of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas.
http://www.dpft.org/

DRUG LEGALIZATION WOULD END PROBLEMS

One of the major reasons that the drug war has been such a spectacular
failure is the strange and selective nature of modern prohibition which
grants a government protected monopoly to a drug like alcohol and prohibits
marijuana based on popularity and mythology rather than science.

*  In 1998, the French National Health and Medical Research Institute and
experts from other countries rated drugs by their danger. They established
three groups: The most dangerous group included only alcohol, heroin and
cocaine. Marijuana was in the least dangerous category.

*  Last year, our  government paid a million dollars for a report from 24
of our leading experts. This report from the Institute Of Medicine said
that marijuana is not a gateway but that making marijuana illegal does push
users toward the use of more dangerous drugs, the exact opposite of our
intention.

*  U.N. Bulletin on Narcotics 1957: " ... indulgence in (marijuana), unlike
alcohol, rarely brings the habitue into a state of extreme intoxication
where he loses entire control over himself. As a rule, those who indulge
habitually can carry on their ordinary vocations for long periods and do
not become a burden to society or even a nuisance."

For centuries in other cultures, marijuana was eaten, drunk or smoked as a
daily staple. British concern about such use in India inspired a 3,000 page
report in 1893 which concluded that marijuana was not a problem.

Many American troops stationed in Panama after 1916 began to use marijuana
instead of alcohol. A special military panel examined the situation for 15
years and also concluded there was no significant problem.

The Dutch have had essentially legal marijuana for 24 years and it has had
little more impact on their society than the introduction of a new brand of
beer. The fact that Dutch adults and children use much less marijuana than
we do, is an indication that non-coercive social norms are far more
powerful than prohibition, which replaces personal responsibility with
government paternalism.

It also might be a comment on the perverse nature of teen-age rebellion.

The war on marijuana has made the Salem Witch Trials look small and
scientific by comparison.

The 1937 prohibition of marijuana was driven by racial prejudice against
Mexicans. It was justified by three fairy tales: that it would kill you,
drive you insane or make you so violent that you would kill your own parents.

Not only were these all absurd, but the same director of the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics who argued that marijuana must be made illegal because it
produced violence argued 18 years later that it must be kept illegal
because it would make our children so pacifistic that they wouldn't fight
communists.

In 1995 and again in 1998, The Lancet, which is arguably the world's
leading medical journal, editorialized in favor of  legalized marijuana,
saying, "based on the medical evidence available, moderate indulgence in
cannabis has little ill-effect on health ... Sooner or later politicians
will have to stop running scared and address the evidence: cannabis per se
is not a hazard to society but driving it further underground may well be."

Marijuana accounts for some 80% of all illegal drug use and its prohibition
has created dramatic public misperceptions about the size and nature of our
drug problem as a whole.

I assume that legalization would  be much like that for alcohol but would
include a ban on public use and advertising.

The moment we clarify the problem and end this enormous drain on our money,
energy and credibility is the moment that we begin to deal with all the
other aspects of drug policy far more effectively.
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MAP posted-by: Terry F