Pubdate: Sat, 17 Sep 2005
Source: East Valley Tribune (AZ)
Copyright: 2005 East Valley Tribune.
Contact:  http://www.eastvalleytribune.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2708
Author: Corbett Brown
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

MARIJUANA IS INDEED DANGEROUS

In his Monday letter, "Marijuana should be legalized, taxed," Kirk Muse 
stated that our government hasn't been able to eradicate the use of 
marijuana, and that it is as highly used as it was in the 1970s.

Just because we have yet to succeed in defeating the use of marijuana 
doesn't mean that we should just give up. Just think if the English would 
have taken that attitude when they were fighting the Nazis, they would be 
speaking German.

Muse is wrong. We must fight against the use of this illegal drug.

Marijuana is illegal for a reason. One is that marijuana is what is known 
as a gateway drug. Gateway drugs are easily obtainable legal or illegal 
drugs that serve as the drug user's first experience with a mind altering drug.

Two studies, "Sequences and Stages in the Patterns of Adolescent Drug Use" 
from the Archives of General Psychiatry, and "From Beer to Crack: 
Development Patterns of Drug Involvement" from the American Journal of 
Public Health, report that almost all those who eventually used illegal 
drugs such as crack cocaine, heroin, etc., first used marijuana. From the 
later journal article, only 10 percent of the high school seniors polled 
who used crack cocaine did so before trying marijuana.

Muse said taxation of government regulated marijuana sales is a good source 
of revenue. The financial cost related to the health problems caused by the 
legaldrugs is high as it is.

Why should we as a people become so permissive as to allow what is now 
illegal to become legal, so that people can travel down the slippery slope 
of drug-induced fun, only to find that when they hit the bottom, what was 
once fun is now physical and psychological misery? And why should we pay 
financially as well as emotionally for what could be prevented?

Corbett Brown

Tempe
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