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END PROHIBITION, CALIFORNIA

Re “Legalizing is a dangerous choice” (Insight, Aug. 22): San Mateo
Police Chief Susan Manheimer claims that after marijuana is
legalized, drug cartels will continue to profit from selling
it. That’s ridiculous.

As a former police chief myself (Seattle, 1994-2000), I’d
respectfully like to ask Manheimer to show us the wine cartels that
grow grapes in our national parks to compete with the legal and
regulated alcohol industry.

Back here in reality, of course, we know that once America ended its
failed experiment with alcohol prohibition, violent gangsters were no
longer able to keep selling booze on the black market for a profit.

Similarly, we can drive street dealers out of business when we take
marijuana out of the shadows and place it under the control of safe,
regulated, licensed businesses. Passing Proposition 19 will be good
for police and for citizens who want safer streets. It’s the last
thing the drug cartels want.

Norm Stamper, Eastsound, Wash.

Pubdate: Thu, 26 Aug 2010

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n679/a06.html

Newshawk: Published Letters Awards www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm

LETTER OF THE WEEK

LEGALIZING DRUGS COULD DIMINISH DANGERS

Norm Jackson evidently feels strongly the most effective way to
minimize the harm caused by drugs is to prohibit them by law
(“Legalizing marijuana makes no sense,” June 16). Didn’t we try that
with alcohol, only to realize that prohibition caused more harm than
before, including deaths and blindness caused by adulterated booze?

Adulterated street heroin killed my 19-year-old son in 1993, so I
vehemently disagree with Jackson. We should legalize all recreational
drugs and stop throwing gazillions of dollars down a rat hole
persecuting a vulnerable minority whose drugs of choice differ from
those chosen by “respectable” people.

Alan Randell

Victoria, British Columbia

Pubdate: Thu, 19 Aug 2010

Source: New Times (San Luis Obispo, CA)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n462/a09.html

Newshawk: Published Letters Awards www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm

LETTER OF THE WEEK

HARPER WANTS MORE CRIMINALS

RE: “Call for prisons clashes with crime stats”, Dave Breakenridge, Aug. 9.

By now, it should be apparent that what the Harperites are doing is
trying to manufacture inmates. They want to impose a U.S.-style,
for-profit prison system onto Canada. This policy has been wildly
successful in the U.S. – what with more inmates than any country in
the history of the world and enormous debts. Meanwhile, a handful of
jailers get rich at taxpayers’ expense. The really scary part is
almost a third of the country is willing to ignore these facts and
allow Harper to blow $10 billion on jails, instead of making $10
billion off of legalized pot.

Russell Barth

Federally Licensed Medical Marijuana User

Drug Reform Analyst and Consultant

Educators for Sensible Drug Policy

Pubdate: Tue, 10 Aug 2010

Source: Calgary Sun, The (CN AB)

Newshawk: Published Letters Awards www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm

ALMOST RIGHT ABOUT DRUGS

Re: “Mexico’s Sounds of Silence – No news is bad news when media self-censors,” Thursday Editorials. The Dallas Morning News almost got it right.

The ghastly violence in Mexico is not about drugs.

It’s about money, and we can stop it. Drug cartels don’t have a valuable product.

The drugs they sell are common and plentiful.

All they have and all they are fighting for is an illegal distribution system. There were no beheadings during most of the history of Mexico and the U.S., when any man, woman or child could buy these products easily, cheaply and legally.

No journalists are murdered today by the distributors of the most popular Mexican drugs, beer and tequila. U.S. drug prohibition laws allowed this untenable situation to develop.

Doing prohibition harder and harder and hoping for a different result will not stop it. The violence will cease when U.S. laws allow competition from well-regulated, legal sellers to put the cartels out
of business.

Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Forum of Texas, Dallas

Pubdate: Sun, 8 Aug 2010

Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n000/a031.html

Newshawk: Published Letters Awards www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm

LETTER OF THE WEEK

FACE THE FACTS ON MARIJUANA

As a representative of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the primary
organization working to reduce the negative impact that both drug
abuse and drug policies have on young people and students, I couldn’t
disagree more with the statements made by Lyndon E. Lafferty (“Don’t
let the marijuana myth live on,” July 25).

Claiming that more teens are in treatment for marijuana than any
other drug is a distortion. They aren’t there because they think
they have a problem. They are placed into treatment because they
have been arrested for marijuana possession and given an
ultimatum. Getting arrested and thrown into the criminal justice
system is the biggest problem marijuana has caused many of these
young people. I saw this firsthand during my time as a substance
abuse counselor with teens.

Mr. Lafferty conveniently leaves out an important fact: Marijuana
prohibition makes it easier for young people to buy the drug in their
schools. You don’t see kids selling six packs of beer or cartons of
cigarettes in the hallways; you see them selling marijuana. That’s
because it’s unregulated, uncontrolled and highly
lucrative. According to the Monitoring the Future Survey, more 10th
graders now smoke pot than cigarettes. When more youth are using a
drug that is illegal than a drug that is tightly regulated and highly
taxed, it’s time to admit that marijuana prohibition doesn’t work.

I hope California voters will vote “yes” on Proposition 19.

Jonathan Perri

Associate Director

Students for Sensible Drug Policy

Pubdate: Thu, 29 Jul 2010

Source: Times-Herald, The (Vallejo, CA)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n590/a03.html

Newshawk: Published Letters Awards www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm

LETTER OF THE WEEK

END WAR ON MARIJUANA

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) famously defined insanity as “doing the
same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Nothing better describes the war on drugs. The 40-year war on drugs
has cost U.S. taxpayers $1 trillion, thousands of lives and broken
up families and failed to meet any of its goals.

Cocaine, heroin and marijuana were sold in drug stores without a
prescription as medicine and treated as such in the early years of
the last century. Yet the deadly drug of tobacco is legal (because
it’s taxed) which kills hundreds of thousands a year.

Sadly many in law enforcement have died from this deadly drug. The
good news is that many in law enforcement are joining Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition. Marijuana needs to be legalized and not
advertised (glorified). This would reduce the use of other
drugs. Prohibition only helps the gangs. It’s good for their business.

Good sources of information on this issue are Marijuana Policy
Project, www.mpp.org, and Drug Policy Alliance, www.drugpolicy.org,
for a start.

Kevin Doran

Ogdensburg

Pubdate: Wed, 21 Jul 2010

Source: Watertown Daily Times (NY)

Newshawk: Published Letters Awards www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm

LETTER OF THE WEEK

NONSTONERS WANT LEGALIZATION TOO

So Louis R. “Skip” Miller (Opinion, July 12) thinks that the only
people who support legalizing marijuana are those who want to get stoned.

Sorry, but he’s wrong.

I don’t smoke pot, but I’ll vote to legalize it. Why? It’s a concept
called “freedom.” I know, the Skip Millers of this world never take
freedom into account when deciding on all the ways that government
should protect us from ourselves.

Some of us, however, believe that adults in a free society shouldn’t
be paying taxes to hire bureaucrats to tell us what we can eat, smoke
or drink.

But use caution if you do consider this viewpoint.

The concept of freedom is, in itself, quite intoxicating.

Joe Greco

Los Altos

Pubdate: Tue, 13 Jul 2010

Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n000/a021.html

Newshawk: Published Letters Awards www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm
Pubdate: Fri, 9 Jul 2010
Source: DrugSense Blog

LETTER OF THE WEEK

NEW JIM CROW: WAR ON DRUGS PROVIDES EXCUSE

The News should be praised for publishing Leonard Pitts’ article about
Michelle Alexander’s book, “The New Jim Crow” (“‘New Jim Crow’
surfaces in U.S. justice,” Other Views, Monday). It is undoubtedly the
most important book published in this century about the U.S.

Over the past 20 or so years, we have seen a huge jump in the
imprisonment of black men in the U.S., using the “war on drugs” as an
excuse to establish a caste system here, with an effect not unlike Jim
Crow. Police statistics show black men use no more drugs than white
men, yet blacks are being rounded up in droves, through checkpoints
and stop-and-search rules, while police avoid using the same tactics
for white men.

As an older, white, Protestant minister fortunate enough to have been
in the civil rights movement from early on, I move easily and freely
in the black communities in Alabama and the nation, have lived in
those communities in Washington, Chicago and Boston, and can testify
that the people there are simply not a dangerous criminal element.

What has created the crisis in the black community is selective and
racist policing, encouraged by the federal government, and joblessness
from the abandonment of these men by major industry as companies have
dumped their employees to shift work out of the country in the pursuit
of profits before people. The new Jim Crow may or may not be
intentional, but it is very real, and it is dividing this nation
between white and black once again. The “war on drugs,” “stop and
search” and checkpoints by police must end.

The Rev. Jack Zylman

Birmingham

Pubdate: Wed, 30 Jun 2010

Source: Birmingham News, The (AL)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n000/a020.html