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STOP U.S.  DRUG WAR AND LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

It's time to end America's longest war -- specifically, the drug war starting with marijuana.  Because it is not about our safety but our control.  Up to 1937 ( see Drug Policy Alliance, www.drugpolicy.org marijuana tax act ) marijuana was sold over the counter in drug stores as medicine without a prescription and was affordable to the poor.  That made it competition to the big drug companies.  John D.  Rockefeller, the nation's first billionaire, 1839-1937 said "competition is a sin," which meant he wanted to stomp out the competition getting President Franklin D.  Roosevelt and Congress to make it illegal because it took profit from the big drug companies he had interest in.

Also, the drug is not about your safety because from 1938 until 2004 the U.S.  government subsidized the tobacco farmers to grow tobacco ( see Wall Street Journal Sept.  17, 2007 ) which contains the deadly drug nicotine and nearly 400,000 Americans a year die from it ( see www.cancer.org for more information ).

Nearly 20,000 people die each year from alcohol-related driving accidents, not counting other crime problems related to alcohol, which is legal.

The greatest innocent victims of any war, either domestically or overseas, like Iraq or Afghanistan, are the children.  War destroys families of the winners and the losers, which makes war government-sponsored child abuse and domestic terrorism.

I hope more police and citizen supporters join Law Enforcement Against Prohibition ( see www.leap.cc ) to end this failed war on drugs.  Currently in America there is a health care debate.  President Obama's plan is more restrictions of socialism, nothing new.

Medical marijuana would reduce health care costs greatly.  Currently, Latin American leaders are calling on United States to rethink its drug laws and end marijuana prohibition.  The drug cartels in Mexico make 60 to 70 percent of their profits from marijuana ( see marijuana policy report published summer 2009 by marijuana policy project: www.mpp.org ).  The war on drugs is costing in a recession $69 billion a year.  They lock up many nonviolent offenders for years, and let the violent offenders out early, just to keep the problems going.

Kevin Doran

Ogdensburg