Published LTE: Culpeper Star-Exponent (VA) -DRUG PROHIBITION A BAD POLICY

Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jun 2010
Author: Howard Wooldridge

Mr.  Jim Bayne’s column Sunday ( “Mexico has a legitimate gripe when it comes to our drug habit” ) refused to mention the elephant in the room; namely, drug prohibition.  As he exhorts us to only use legal drugs, he and the prohibition crowd force us to use alcohol, a much more dangerous drug than marijuana, to take the edge off the day at 6 p.m.  He is flat wrong that marijuana is a gateway drug.  Every government research in five countries has concluded it is not ( the last was our Institute of Medicine in 1999 ).

Mankind has been taking mind-altering, intoxicating, addictive drugs for thousands of years.  Drug prohibition – a self-inflicted wound – continues to be the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery and Jim Crow.  As a retired police officer, I am baffled why this country continues to cling to the notion that drug prohibition is worth keeping.

Howard Wooldridge

Adamstown, Md.