To the letter writer [Marijuana use can lead to other addictions, Feb. 1] who is the leader of CARE and member of PREVCO (Prevention Coalition of SE Michigan) who objected to marijuana use for a number of reasons: from a public health and safety standpoint do you agree alcohol abuse is a far worse problem than marijuana abuse? 

If your answer is Yes, then would you advocate alcohol prohibition? 

If your answer is Yes to legal prohibition of alcohol, then you obviously know nothing of history.  For the same reason alcohol needs to be legal (and appropriately regulated), drugs need to be legal.  It’s none of the government’s business whether consenting adults use any particular substance: we’re adults, this is America, and we own our own bodies.  If the lady wants to persuade folks to make different decisions, fine, they’ll listen to you better if you don’t point a gun at their heads. 

Basically, most people use marijuana safely and responsibly just as most people use alcohol safely and responsibly.  The difference is that armed men with badges terrorize the pot smoker and throw him in jail.  In fact the greatest danger of using illegal drugs is the user has his life systematically crushed by the implacable state. 

 

Four decades of the imbecilic Drug War have shown intelligent, compassionate people that drug choice is not the responsibility of law enforcement (rather families, counselors, churches, friends, and so on can reasonably influence voluntary individual behavior); by ending drug prohibition we will humanely solve the drug “problem” and save hundreds of billions of dollars to boot.  Like the Iraq war, it’s time to leave where we don’t belong and make amends to the millions of victims of this gross, unconstitutional intervention.

 

Brian Wright

Letter to the Oakland Press