Pubdate: Mon, 23 Sep 2002
Source: Medicine Hat News (CN AB)
Copyright: 2002 Alberta Newspaper Group, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.medicinehatnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1833
Author:  Myron Von Hollingsworth

PROHIBITION PROMOTES WAR

Cannabis has no lethal dose and its pharmacological effects have never 
caused a single death in over 5,000 years of recorded history.

The (unseen) driving force against medical (or unrestricted adult) 
legalization of cannabis is the fact that cannabis can't be patented. This 
precludes the need for big business to be involved and that fact makes 
cannabis commercially unattractive to the pharmaceutical, tobacco and 
alcohol industries (lobbies). It seems that if it can't be profitized 
successfully the government can't justify legalization even for the sick 
and dying.

Furthermore, the war on cannabis drives the war on drugs. Without cannabis 
prohibition, the drug war would be reduced to a pillow fight. This is the 
politics and the economics of cannabis prohibition.

Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the party 
line of cannabis prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison 
and military industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the "drug 
treatment" industry, Immigration and Naturalization Services, the CIA, the 
FBI, the DEA, the politicians themselves and others can't live without the 
budget justification, not to mention the invisible profits, bribery, 
corruption and forfeiture benefits that prohibition affords them.

The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement 
policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are supposed 
to be inalienable according to the constitution and bill of rights.

Myron Von Hollingsworth

Fort Worth, Tex.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens