[420 Girl]

It was interesting to see the Press make reference to the movie "Reefer Madness" in its June 2 editorial supporting a state bill that would allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The movie, like the misinformation Partnership for a Drug-Free America feeds the public, is full of lies. The religious group that financed "Reefer Madness" simply made stuff up.

These groups say smoking pot is bad for you. It probably is. But nobody says you have to smoke it. You can eat it.

They say it's a gateway drug. In 2006, the government arrested 829,625 people for marijuana offenses. This number has been rising every year since the drug war started in 1914. Common sense should tell you that by now, there should be a lot more hard-core heroin addicts than there are if you believed the lies. When our government started the drug war, 5 percent of the population was addicted to hard-core drugs; 94 years later, it's still 5 percent. The only thing that's changed is 1 in 100 Americans now are in prison. More people are in jail in America than in China, which has four times the population.

What's the harm if medical marijuana is legalized? I've never heard of anyone's child overdosing on marijuana, but thousands die of acute alcohol poisoning. Police are arresting more than 800,000 people for this drug each year. At least 10 times that number are probably using it. If all those scary things about the dangers of marijuana were going to happen, they would have happened by now.

The drug war is a failure. Our government has gone from going after dealers to going after users because users don't have the money to fight back. The government takes people's homes and sells their property at auction for its own benefit. It makes money off this war. Our prisons are filled with more nonviolent drug users than violent dealers.

Talk shows tell us federal prosecutors are letting illegal-immigrant drug smugglers go if they have less than 500 pounds of marijuana, while we have local prosecutors sending Americans to jail for an ounce. The do-good groups, the federal government and law enforcement should be ashamed of the lies they tell and the things they do.

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