Pubdate: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 Source: Dispatch, The (NC) Copyright: 2011, The Lexington Dispatch Contact: http://www.the-dispatch.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1583 Author: Redford Givens Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n099/a11.html DRUG LAWS CAUSE DISASTER Editor: Letter writer Jackie Heninger piously says about marijuana prisoners, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." However, like all other drug crusaders Ms. Heninger neglects to supply any reasons why marijuana should be illegal in the first place. She provides no justification for the 20-year to life sentences given to marijuana growers and sellers. Heninger's health accusations are entirely false because marijuana use does not cause brain damage or injure the body in any way. Marijuana does not cause lung cancer because to date the Centers for Disease Control have yet to trace the first case of cancer of any kind to marijuana use. (See: "Large Study Finds No Link between Marijuana and Lung Cancer," www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0002491F-755F-1473-B55F83414B7F0000, and "Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection," www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729_pf.html As for conditions when heroin and cocaine were legal, Heninger neglects to mention that there were no outlaw drug cartels, no violent drug gangs and so such thing as "drug crime" in any form. All of the crime, disease and death surrounding illegal drugs began after they were prohibited, not before. The only reason violent drug cartels are running wild in Mexico is because the drug war guarantees huge profits. Without the drug prohibition subsidy that makes drug dealing the most profitable business on Earth, the drug cartels would vanish very quickly. When addicts could buy all of the heroin, morphine, cocaine and anything else they wanted cheaply and legally, there was no such thing as a societal "drug problem." When addicts could get their drugs from the corner pharmacy they held regular jobs, raised decent families and were indistinguishable from teetotalers. Now we have hundreds of thousands of shattered families and the drug warriors have filled our prisons with nonviolent drug users without ever achieving a single declared goal. (See The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cu5.html ) The prohibitionists must accept responsibility for the disaster they have created with 100 years of hysterical drug laws. And yet Heninger is not satisfied. Heninger wants even more people in prison even though her drug crusade is costing California (and some other states) more for incarceration than for higher education. Before recommending drug prohibition as a path to higher moral standards, Heninger should consider the thievery, corruption, violence and murder caused by a lunatic drug crusade. Those of us with working memories remember that the alcohol prohibitionists made the same empty moral promises while causing a disaster in the 1920s and '30s. It is worth remembering that Eliot Ness never put the bootleggers out of business. Repeal and a regulated market for alcohol did that in short order. Since 1933, we have not had a bombing or a shootout over a beer route. Redford Givens, Webmaster Schaffer Library of Drug Policy San Francisco - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom