Pubdate: Wed, 18 Dec 2002
Source: Creative Loafing Atlanta (GA)
Copyright: 2002, Creative Loafing
Contact:  http://www.atlanta.creativeloafing.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1507
Author:    Robert Sharpe
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n2237/a05.html

RELATIVELY HARMLESS

So Steve Tucker served a 10-year prison sentence for selling legal light 
bulbs that could have been used to grow marijuana ("Forgotten man," Dec. 
4). International drug cartels are the prime beneficiaries of our 
government's misguided marijuana eradication efforts. As long as there is a 
demand for marijuana, there will be a supply. Eliminating a local cottage 
industry only to have it replaced by organized crime groups that also sell 
cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is not necessarily a good thing.

Taxing and regulating marijuana, the most popular illicit drug, is a 
cost-effective alternative to the $50 billion drug war. In Europe, the 
Netherlands has successfully reduced overall drug use by replacing 
marijuana prohibition with adult regulation. Dutch rates of drug use are 
significantly lower than U.S. rates in every category. Separating the hard 
and soft drug markets and establishing age controls for marijuana has 
proven more effective than zero tolerance.

Here in the U.S. marijuana provides the black market contacts that 
introduce consumers to hard drugs. This "gateway" is the direct result of a 
fundamentally flawed policy. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown 
to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of 
tobacco. Unfortunately, marijuana represents the counterculture to 
misguided reactionaries intent on legislating their version of morality.

In subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors the U.S. government is 
inadvertently subsidizing organized crime. The drug war's distortion of 
immutable laws of supply and demand make an easily grown weed literally 
worth its weight in gold. The only clear winners in the war on some drugs 
are drug cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs politicians who've built 
careers on confusing drug prohibition's collateral damage with a relatively 
harmless plant.

- -- Robert Sharpe,

Program Officer, Drug Policy Alliance
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