[420 Girl]

I hope Niki Payne is right in her Dec. 11 Daily Forty-Niner article about Barack Obama's potential for leadership.

With the exception of Dennis Kucinich on the left and Ron Paul on the right, drug policy reform is conspicuously absent from the presidential campaign. Most candidates are all too willing to jail citizens for consensual vices they themselves once engaged in.

After allegedly not inhaling, [former Pres. Bill] Clinton went out of his way to prove his tough-on-some-drugs credentials. An admitted former problem-drinker and alleged illicit drug user, Bush has gone so far to as to arrest cancer and AIDS patients in states with voter-approved medical marijuana laws.

This drug war nonsense has gone on long enough. These days, zero tolerance poses a greater threat to youth than drugs. According to the "Monitoring the Future" survey, 48 percent of U.S. high school seniors have tried an illicit drug. Denying half the nation's youth an education is not in America's best interest.

Most kids outgrow their youthful indiscretions involving illicit drugs, some even going on to become president. An arrest and criminal record, on the other hand, can be life-shattering. Students who want to help end the intergenerational culture war, otherwise known as the war on some drugs, should contact Students for Sensible Drug Policy at www.SchoolsNotPrisons.com

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