It is time that the American government realized the desires of the American people. It is time to STOP THE DRUG WAR! The Drug War is being waged by our government against the peaceful population of this country. It is a war that pits the police against the people they should be protecting. It pits neighbor against neighbor, and children against parents. People are spying on each other. No one trusts anyone any more. We live in fear in our own homes. Our prisons are continuing to be filled with non-violent people who use marijuana as a medicine. The cost of the drug war has been a great burden on our society. It's obvious that the drug war has been a total failure. This war against the American people has to end.
The war on marijuana has deprived us of an economically valuable crop, cannabis hemp, a productive source of fiber, biomass, protein and oil.
The war on marijuana has cruelly deprived medical patients of valuable therapy for nausea from chemotherapy, AIDS, glaucoma, chronic pain and spasticity, migraines, depression and other diseases.
The war on marijuana has not controlled drug abuse. On the contrary, the record shows clearly that the crackdown on marijuana fueled the country's disastrous cocaine epidemic. Recent studies have found that marijuana tends to substitute for alcohol and harder drugs, and that states with tough marijuana laws tend to have worse accident and drug abuse problems. Official studies have consistently called for further decriminalization, including the National Academy of Sciences (1982), the Presidential Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (1973), and the state Research Advisory Panel (1990).
Marijuana is a plant which, when smoked, eaten or made into a tea, eases suffering, enhances appetite, clears vision and calms spasms. It has been used medicinally for at least 5000 years and has never killed one single human being through its physiological effects. It has no negative interactivity with other more dangerous but legal drugs and almost no one is allergic to it. The most basic of human rights is to tend to ones own body as one sees fit.
