Pubdate: Mon, 13 Apr 2009
Source: Exponent, The (Purdue U, IN Edu)
Copyright: 2009 Purdue Student Publishing Foundation
Contact:  http://www.purdueexponent.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/883
Author: Dan Strauss

SAME RESTRICTIONS SHOULD BE ON MARIJUANA, ALCOHOL

To Jimmy Cox and his Wednesday anti-drug letter:

It's funny that you mention that legalizing drugs would be the "worst 
kind of public policy in the history of the United States." As I 
recall, another public policy sticks out as pretty awful: prohibition.

You see, there are a lot of similarities between alcohol and 
marijuana. Both have the potential for abuse. Both impair your 
judgment. Both are a lot of fun to consume.

And while you say that weed causes schizophrenia, the results are 
correlative at best and show that alcohol use actually has a higher 
chance of "causing" schizophrenia later in life. Alcohol is much more 
destructive to one's body, especially if you're a kid. Alcohol 
negatively effects every system in the body, ranging from diabetes to 
brain damage.

My point is that, nevertheless, alcohol is one of those things that 
people (myself included) are going to use anyway, regardless of the 
law or the health risks. We might as well allow them to and save 
ourselves the trouble of fighting bootlegging gangsters, right?

Same goes for weed, I say. Impose the same restrictions on marijuana 
as we do on alcohol - must be 21 to buy, no smoking and driving, etc. 
- - and legalizing it can only benefit the country, especially if the 
government can see some economic gain. Now, there's one other thing 
that always bothers me: Why is it morally wrong to smoke marijuana? 
Isn't it more wrong to limit people's freedom in such a basic way?

People should be allowed to take responsibility with their own 
bodies. There are lots of better ways to kill yourself, both 
physically and morally, that we don't need to waste our time cracking 
down on weed. So, about those gun laws ...

Dan Strauss Senior, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom