December 28, 2001

Eau Claire Leader Telegram

by Robert Sharpe

In your Dec.  15 editorial, you argue that the Wisconsin Legislature should grant voters a referendum on medical marijuana. 

The handful of reactionaries in the Legislature who confuse doctor-prescribed medical marijuana with the counterculture of the 1960s won't look kindly upon letting the democratic process decide the issue.  Every medical marijuana ballot initiative that allows doctors to decide what's best for their patients has won. 

Congress needs to respect states' rights and show leadership on medical marijuana, which roughly 70 percent of Americans support. 

Marijuana prohibition itself should be subjected to a thorough cost-benefit analysis.  Unfortunately, a review of marijuana legislation would open up a Pandora's box most politicians would just as soon avoid. 

America's marijuana laws are based on culture and xenophobia, not science.  The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration during the early 1900s, despite vocal opposition from the American Medical Association. 

White Americans did not even begin to smoke marijuana until a soon-to-be entrenched government bureaucracy began funding reefer madness propaganda.  Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive at best.  According to a Pew Research poll, 38 percent of Americans have smoked pot.  The reefer madness myths have long been discredited, forcing the drug war gravy train to spend millions of tax dollars on politicized research, trying to find harm in a relatively harmless plant. 

Meanwhile, research that might demonstrate the medical efficacy of marijuana is consistently blocked.  The direct experience of millions of Americans contradicts the sensationalistic myths used to justify marijuana prohibition.  Illegal drug use is the only public health issue wherein key stakeholders are not only ignored, but actively persecuted and incarcerated. 

In terms of medical marijuana, those stakeholders happen to be cancer and AIDS patients. 

ROBERT SHARPE Program Officer The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation Washington, D.C.