Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jun 2010
Source: Culpeper Star-Exponent (VA)
Copyright: 2010 Culpeper Star-Exponent
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/QTbG60wN
Website: http://www.starexponent.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1946
Author: Howard Wooldridge

DRUG PROHIBITION A BAD POLICY

Mr. Jim Bayne's column Sunday ("Mexico has a legitimate gripe when it 
comes to our drug habit") refused to mention the elephant in the 
room; namely, drug prohibition. As he exhorts us to only use legal 
drugs, he and the prohibition crowd force us to use alcohol, a much 
more dangerous drug than marijuana, to take the edge off the day at 6 
p.m. He is flat wrong that marijuana is a gateway drug. Every 
government research in five countries has concluded it is not (the 
last was our Institute of Medicine in 1999).

Mankind has been taking mind-altering, intoxicating, addictive drugs 
for thousands of years.  Drug prohibition - a self-inflicted wound - 
continues to be the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral 
policy since slavery and Jim Crow.  As a retired police officer, I am 
baffled why this country continues to cling to the notion that drug 
prohibition is worth keeping.

Howard Wooldridge

Adamstown, Md.
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