Pubdate: Thu, 17 Jan 2002
Source: Athens News, The (OH)
Copyright: 2002, Athens News
Contact:  http://www.athensnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1603
Author: Robert Sharpe
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hemp.htm (Hemp)

HEMP ENFORCEMENT JUST ANOTHER

So the Drug Enforcement Administration has decided to get tough on hemp 
pretzels, snack bars and veggie burgers (The NEWS, Jan. 7). The timing is 
bizarre to say the least. Now that America faces the all-too-real threat of 
international terrorism, the misguided efforts of government bureaucrats to 
shut down legitimate businesses like the Ohio Hempery are a gross misuse of 
tax dollars.

Prior to the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, few Americans had 
heard of marijuana, despite widespread cultivation of its non-intoxicating 
cousin, industrial hemp. America's marijuana laws are the result of racist 
yellow journalism, not health outcomes. Reefer madness hysteria followed a 
wave of Mexican migration during the early 1900s. Incredibly violent acts 
were allegedly committed by minorities under marijuana's influence. At the 
time few white Americans had even heard of marijuana, much less smoked it.

Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been 
counterproductive at best. According to a Pew Research poll, 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. For a drug that has never been shown to cause an overdose 
death, the allocation of resources used to enforce marijuana laws is 
outrageous.

Adding non-intoxicating hemp products to the intergenerational culture war 
otherwise known as the war on some drugs is an unwelcome expansion of the 
$50 billion drug war gravy train.

Additional history: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/HISTORY.HTM

Pew Research poll findings: http://www.people-press.org/drugs01que.htm

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A. Program Officer

The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation

Washington, D.C
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager