By the “Drug Problem”, do they mean the proliferation in our communities of all illicit, mood-altering, physically dangerous drugs? Or do they really mean the accompanying problems bought on by these proscribed substances: crime and the threat of crime, violence, disease, the growing number of users on public welfare, the loss of productivity to the country’s industry, the congestion of the court system, the over-crowding of our penal institutions, the diversion of our tax dollars from more productive areas, the corruption of our law enforcement agencies, and directly and indirectly the erosion of our civil rights?

Since I am confining this paper to discussing the laws prohibiting marijuana use, I will concede that it fits the first two categories above; i.e. it is by law, illicit, and by its nature, mood-altering. With the third category we enter upon shaky ground. There is no scienti

Number of American Deaths Nationwide Per Year From Drugs

Tobacco.................340,000 TO 450,000 deaths

Report of The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse , 1972 [The "Nixon Marijuana Commission"]

One rather puzzling fact is the number of dedicated advocates of legal (and in many cases, state-funded) abortions using the logic: “my body, my choice”, who go into near hysteria when the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana is mentioned. Surely the same argument could be used for one as logically as the other. Another measure of the degree of our ignorance concerning this substance is exemplified by the fact that under our current drug laws marijuana is classified as a Schedule I substance (along with heroin and LSD) while cocaine is placed in Schedule II in the confusing hodgepodge we refer to as our National Drug Policy.

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