To the editors:

Kudos to the Crimson for an excellent editorial (“Decriminalize Marijuana,” April 12). Unfortunately, a review of marijuana legislation would open up a Pandora’s box most politicians would just as soon avoid. America’s marijuana laws are based on culture and xenophobia, not science.

The first laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical Association. White Americans did not even begin to smoke marijuana until a soon-to-be entrenched government bureaucracy began funding reefer madness propaganda.

Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive at best. An estimated 38 percent of Americans have now smoked pot. The reefer madness myths have long been discredited, forcing the drug war gravy train to spend millions of tax dollars on politicized research, trying to find harm in a relatively harmless plant.

Illegal drug use is the only public health issue wherein key stakeholders are not only ignored, but actively persecuted and incarcerated. In terms of medical marijuana, those stakeholders happen to be cancer and AIDS patients.

Robert Sharpe

Washington, D.C.

April 12, 2002

The writer is Program Officer at the Drug Policy Alliance.