Pubdate: Wed, 31 Jul 2002
Source: Maui News, The (HI)
Contact:  2002 The Maui News
Website: http://www.mauinews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2259
Author: Michele Bajan
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?207 (Cannabis - United Kingdom)

U.S. SHOULD FOLLOW ENGLAND ON MARIJUANA

It is a glorious event that England has sensibly rescheduled marijuana,
lowering it to a class C. That is the least harmful classification that it
has. Their government has made a rational choice to allow for personal use
of a natural substance that has never killed anyone, thus, giving their law
enforcement the freedom and ability to focus on drugs, violence and problems
that really ARE harmful to citizens and society.

I hope this intelligent decision will influence the U.S. and other European
countries to review the real effects of marijuana and legitimately determine
if those effects are threatening at all, or enough to merit depriving
nonviolent citizens of their freedom, invading their privacy, giving them
felony charges, and overcrowding our jails with so many casual cannabis
users.

Until a person has deprived someone else of life, liberty or pursuit of
happiness, no civil crime has been committed. By designating cannabis as a
federal crime, our government has benefited by acquiring our property and
money, while officials assure the certain industries bribing them that their
monopolies will continue without cannabis competition. When marijuana is
legal, they will have no excuse to stop us from growing industrial hemp to
supply energy as well as our oil, fiber and paper products! Our planet was
healthy and thriving for thousands of years while humans were using mass
quantities of hemp to supply much of our energy and material needs.

This is the dawn of worldwide acceptance and relegalization of our No. 1
most valuable renewable resource! This is a very exciting time for humanity.
Finally, it looks like the possibility of correcting our environmental
mistakes of the past may happen!

Michele Bajan

Kahului
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