Pubdate: Mon, 17 Dec 2007
Source: Daily Forty-Niner (Cal State Long Beach, CA Edu)
Copyright: 2007 Daily Forty-Niner
Contact: http://www.daily49er.com/home/lettertotheeditor/
Website: http://www.daily49er.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1391
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n1438/a11.html
Author: Robert Sharpe

DRUG POLICY IS ANTIQUATED

I hope Niki Payne is right in her Dec. 11 Daily Forty-Niner article 
about Barack Obama's potential for leadership.

With the exception of Dennis Kucinich on the left and Ron Paul on the 
right, drug policy reform is conspicuously absent from the 
presidential campaign. Most candidates are all too willing to jail 
citizens for consensual vices they themselves once engaged in.

After allegedly not inhaling, [former Pres. Bill] Clinton went out of 
his way to prove his tough-on-some-drugs credentials. An admitted 
former problem-drinker and alleged illicit drug user, Bush has gone 
so far to as to arrest cancer and AIDS patients in states with 
voter-approved medical marijuana laws.

This drug war nonsense has gone on long enough. These days, zero 
tolerance poses a greater threat to youth than drugs. According to 
the "Monitoring the Future" survey, 48 percent of U.S. high school 
seniors have tried an illicit drug. Denying half the nation's youth 
an education is not in America's best interest.

Most kids outgrow their youthful indiscretions involving illicit 
drugs, some even going on to become president. An arrest and criminal 
record, on the other hand, can be life-shattering. Students who want 
to help end the intergenerational culture war, otherwise known as the 
war on some drugs, should contact Students for Sensible Drug Policy 
at www.SchoolsNotPrisons.com

- -- Robert Sharpe, MPA policy analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy 
Washington, D.C.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom