What Is More Harmful, Marijuana Or Marijuana Laws?

"They used to burn witches. Today we laugh at them. Today we jail people for Marijuana. Tomorrow they'll laugh at us." These words came from a prison cell in Canada, from Rosie Rowbotham, Canada's longest serving prisoner for a marijuana conviction. Only time will tell how much truth there is in this statement, so for now, all anyone can do is educate themselves about the cannabis plant, and its history in America, so as to form solid opinions based on credible information. The intention of this document is to lay out some facts, and to help discern between the credible information, and the heavily-biased propaganda so many have based their opinions on in the past. With the facts laid out, hopefully readers will be able to answer the question of what is more harmful, marijuana or marijuana laws.

America tried alcohol prohibition between 1919 and 1931, but discovered that the crime and violence associated with prohibition was more damaging than the evil sought to be prohibited. With tobacco, America has learned over the last decade that education is the most effective way to discourage use. Yet, America fails to apply these

lessons to marijuana policy. By stubbornly defining all marijuana smoking as criminal, including that which involves adults smoking in the privacy of their own homes, we are

wasting police and prosecutorial resources, clogging courts, filling costly and scarce jail and prison space, and needlessly wrecking the lives and careers of genuinely good citizens.

Before we discuss the marijuana laws, we must first find where these laws originated. These laws come from a 75 year old government funded campaign against the "devil's weed," with the intention of perverting the public's perception based on lies. In 1933, a movie entitled "Reefer Madness" shows a man getting high and murdering another man in cold blood because he was "red hot" on reefer. Other propaganda from the United States' first Drug Czar Harry J. Anslinger suggested marijuana made its users "slaves to the narcotic, until they deteriorate or go insane turning them to violent crime such as murder." A widely publicized issue of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology asserted that the marijuana user is capable of "great feats of strength and endurance, during which no

fatigue is felt. ... Sexual desires are stimulated and may lead to unnatural acts, such as indecent exposure and rape. ... [Use of marijuana] ends in the destruction of brain tissues and nerve centers, and does irreparable damage. If continued, the inevitable result is

insanity, which those familiar with it describe as absolutely incurable, and, without exception ending in death." In 1944, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia ordered an extensive study by 31 impartial scientists, which item by item disproved every negative effect reported by Anslinger and the United States Government. This report was thrown in the trash by President Roosevelt, while Anslinger destroyed every copy he could get his hands on. After all, he had a career to worry about. Not only did he have control over government documents pertaining to marijuana, Hollywood gave him complete control over any movie scripts mentioning marijuana. With this power, he sculpted the opinions of the nation. Congress held only two hearings to debate the merits of marijuana prohibition. The hearings totaled just one hour. As a federal witness, Harry J. Anslinger testified before the House Ways and Means Committee that "this drug is entirely the monster-Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured."

With background information in place, let's look now at the harmfulness of the marijuana prohibition laws. First, consider Humboldt County, California, which in the 1960s was very poor due to the closing down of its logging industry. By the 1980s, it was considered to be one of California's most prosperous areas. The reason for this being, Humboldt County was directly in the heart of sinsemilla country, where marijuana of high quality and potency was grown. "After the government crackdown on cultivation in the late 1980s, the county slipped back to its economically depressed state." The criminalization of marijuana holds the nation back from entering into a conservatively figured $17 billion industry, all of which would be taxable. In place of this potential income is a "War on Drugs" costing the taxpayers over $7.5 billion annually. This money to fund the "war" has been invested in a program that has done nothing to effect the marijuana industry except cause a decrease in prices and an increase in potency.

The only clear winners in the "War on Drugs" are drug cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs politicians who've built careers on confusing drug prohibition's collateral damage with a relatively harmless plant. The big losers in this battle are the American taxpayers. Most Americans do not want to spend scarce public funds incarcerating nonviolent marijuana offenders, at a cost of $23,000 per year. Politicians must reconsider our country's priorities and attach more importance to combating violent crime than targeting marijuana smokers. Marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers at least $7.5 billion

annually. This is an enormous waste of scarce federal dollars that should be used to target violent crime.

With the decriminalization of marijuana, we will find a drastic decrease in the amount of "street dealers" who take in billions in tax free income every year. This will leave few dealers selling high-grade marijuana to few people. With the decline of "street dealers", we will cut down on the amount of people buying weed and being offered harder drugs. This could actually deter marijuana users from becoming another hard-drug using gate-way statistic.

"Make the most of the Indian hemp seed. Sow it everywhere." Too bad we have failed to heed the wisdom of our first president, George Washington. For thousands of years, people grew hemp and prospered. Marijuana cultivation in the United States can trace its lineage some 400 years. For most of our nation's history, farmers grew marijuana -- then known exclusively as hemp -- for its fiber content. Colonialists planted the first American hemp crop in 1611 near Jamestown, Virginia. It flourishes without pesticides, and birds happily devour their favorite seed. "In the 1930s, an unholy alliance of forest magnates, ex-Prohibition agents, and chemical and industrial pharmaceutical companies used the public's fear of drugs and concern for kids to end the use of not only marijuana, but industrial hemp."4 This ban has costs the nation billions in potential exports,