Pubdate: Sun, 23 Mar 2014
Source: Telegraph, The (Nashua, NH)
Copyright: 2014 Telegraph Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.nashuatelegraph.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/885
Author: Carmen Yarrusso
Note: Carmen Yarrusso lives in Brookline. This article was adapted 
from a letter he sent to members of the New Hampshire Legislature.

PROHIBITION OF POT IS REAL CRIMINAL ACT

If you're a representative and vote against the wishes of 60 percent 
of your constituency and you want to get re-elected, you'd better 
have a cogent explanation why you think your judgment is superior to 
the people you supposedly represent. Saying, "it's the wrong message 
to send to young people" is not a cogent explanation.

It's OK to be lax educating yourself about a personal issue. But when 
you represent other people's interests, you have a moral obligation 
to sufficiently educate yourself about issues you vote on.

Just a little Internet research would convince you beyond any 
reasonable doubt that marijuana prohibition isn't just 
counterproductive, it's the major part of a vast crime against 
humanity. If you care about ending unnecessary death and suffering in 
this world, you'd do everything you can to end marijuana prohibition.

I've studied drug prohibition and its guaranteed evil ramifications 
for years. I've read many books on the subject. Though my medical 
condition doesn't qualify under New Hampshire's very narrow medical 
marijuana law, I've used marijuana nearly every day for more than 30 
years to stay alive. I support House Bill 492, which would legalize 
and regulate marijuana, and encourage our representives to support it, too.

Representatives are morally obligated to carefully weigh the 
negatives of marijuana prohibition against the positives and only 
vote to continue prohibition if the positives outweigh the negatives. 
Only those supporting prohibition for special interests, or those who 
have intentionally kept themselves ignorant, would claim the 
positives come even close to outweighing the negatives.

Like the war on terror, the drug war is a government-contrived "war" 
based on lies that generates massive profits for a few, while causing 
massive suffering for many.

The drug war is futile by design (and thus never-ending) because it 
doesn't "fight" drugs. To the contrary, it encourages the production 
and distribution of prohibited drugs by guaranteeing extremely high profits.

But the most insidious and evil aspect of the drug war is that it 
manufactures its own enemies by criminalizing the most basic of human 
rights - the right of sovereignty over your own body. The drug war 
could not exist without first inventing a bogus crime.

Our government wastes billions of tax dollars each year harassing and 
jailing millions of decent, productive Americans for a 
government-invented "crime." The use of drugs (even dangerous drugs 
like alcohol and nicotine) simply doesn't meet any moral definition of crime.

About 50 government agencies waste billions of taxpayer dollars each 
year "fighting" a bogus crime. Of the millions of illegal drug users, 
the vast majority only use marijuana. If marijuana were legalized, 
these government agencies would suddenly lose billions of dollars 
because millions of former "criminals" would suddenly be granted 
sovereignty over their own bodies. The vast army amassed to fight the 
drug war would need to be dissolved at great cost.

Our government strongly opposes any honest debate about marijuana 
legalization because, if the squalid truth got out, this 
blood-soaked, extremely profitable scam would soon end.

Evidence shows that practically all the harm associated with drug use 
is caused by its illegality, not from actual drug use. There are 
millions of drug users, but relatively few are harmed by their drug 
use. These few should be patients, never criminals.

It's not just the millions arrested for drugs who suffer from this 
gross injustice. We gullible Americans have allowed our government to 
invent a bogus crime that causes massive misery worldwide while 
costing taxpayers billions.

Consider this list of easily avoidable human tragedies directly 
caused by a bogus crime: A tax-free, unregulated, 
multi-billion-dollar drug industry necessarily run by violent 
criminals; a bloated law enforcement bureaucracy wasting billions in 
a guaranteed-futile attempt to curtail this drug industry (which 
actually guarantees its extreme profitability); a deteriorating 
public school system drained of billions that get diverted into the 
law enforcement bureaucracy; courts and prisons overflowing with 
non-violent "criminals;" tens of thousands of children enduring the 
suffering and stigma of one or both parents in jail for a bogus 
crime; the erosion of our Constitution as civil liberties are 
sacrificed to fight a crime made in the USA; rampant corruption of 
foreign governments (like Mexico and Columbia) so driven by U.S. drug 
profits that life and human rights are secondary; a growing death 
toll from police breaking down doors to catch people using substances 
less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol; a growing disrespect for laws 
and authority fueled by knowing our government can arbitrarily invent 
a bogus crime. This sordid list goes on and on.

If real crime is knowingly harming others, then the real crime here 
is not drug use, but making drug use a crime. And the real criminals 
aren't drug users, but well-meaning people who ignorantly condone a 
ruthless government scam that causes vast human death and suffering.

How can our representatives mock our state motto, vote against 60 
percent of their constituency and support a crime against humanity? 
Where's their sense of decency?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom