Pubdate: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 Source: Seattle Times (WA) Copyright: 2004 The Seattle Times Company Contact: http://www.seattletimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409 Author: Robert Sharpe Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n246/a03.html WARPED SENSIBILITIES John Hieger is absolutely right about the drug war being a failure. The drug war is in large part a war on marijuana, by far the most popular illicit drug. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the United States than any European country, yet America is one of the few Western countries that uses its criminal justice system to punish citizens who prefer marijuana to martinis. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. The short-term health effects of marijuana are inconsequential compared to the long-term effects of criminal records. Unfortunately, marijuana represents the counterculture to many Americans. 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. The big losers in this battle are the American taxpayers, who have been deluded into believing big government is the appropriate response to non-traditional consensual vices. The results of a comparative study of European and U.S. rates of drug use can be found at: www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/espad_pr.pdf Robert Sharpe, MPA, policy analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy, Arlington, Va. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake