Pubdate: Wed, 20 May 2009
Source: Guardian (Wright State U, OH Edu)
Copyright: 2009 Guardian
Contact: http://www.theguardianonline.com/2.9150
Website: http://www.theguardianonline.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4586
Author: Cj Weitz
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n427/a06.html

112.9 YEARS TO FINANCE THE BAILOUT

This letter to the editor is in response to the article "Finance the 
bailout: Legalize weed." In the editorial, the author points out that 
"there were 117,752 deaths from smoking related cardiovascular 
diseases and 101,043 deaths from smoking related respiratory diseases 
in 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention." The author can list all the numbers involving smoke 
related respiratory or cardiovascular deaths that they want but to 
use these numbers as a valid argument in biases of marijuana being 
less harmful than cigarettes is completely inaccurate. These numbers 
are calculated, as you said by smoke related respiratory and or 
cardiovascular deaths.

There is no way to identify whether any of these people were chronic 
tobacco users or chronic marijuana users. It would require extensive 
research on each individual, after death, to determine whether these 
in total 218,795 smoke related deaths were tobacco or marijuana induced.

The author also states that there are more proven negative health 
effects by use of tobacco than marijuana.

The last time I checked both smoking tobacco and marijuana both 
effect brain cells and their development as well as cause heart and 
respiratory disease.

To state that marijuana is a healthier alternative to tobacco is 
again completely invalid, unless you specify or provide scientific 
data that shows marijuana and tobacco use were equal among the 
subjects; otherwise you are again presenting biased data because of 
the incomparable use amounts between the two.

Finance the bailout: Legalize weed" touches on the point that 
marijuana can effectively be used to help provide a billion dollar 
revenue that can shore up deficits caused by the recent bailout 
signed by President Barack Obama. According to the author's 
statistics up to 6.2 billion dollars could be effectively produced 
and contributed towards government savings. 6.2 billion dollars is 
clearly an effective and large amount of money that could be 
contributed towards financing the bailout but the colossal bailout 
was over 700 billion dollars.

If the government applied marijuana tax revenue at a rate of 6.2 
billion dollars (note that this figure represents the maximum amount 
of predicted tax revenue) contributed towards the bailout deficit per 
year, it would still take 112.9 years to pay this deficit off.

For these reasons, I find this editorial completely useless and 
invalid as far as financing a 700 billion dollar bailout with 
marijuana tax revenue, as well as marijuana being less harmful and 
healthier when compared to tobacco use.

CJ Weitz
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom