Detail from cover of album "Legalize It! "©1976 CBS Legalize it!, and I will advertise it! Peter Tosh Smokin' by Juan Wilson © 2000 The Gobbler: Winter Thaw Yes, it is illegal. OK, so there are some reasons to believe chronic use can potentially lead to other dangerous activity and even short term memory loss. On the other hand, have you been listening to those ads on TV for fat alteration drugs? "Yes officer, I gave him the artificial pork chops, with the added hormones... even knowing they could cause genetic damage and chronic diarrhea associated with a continual need to go to the bathroom..." Huh! Have you? ... but that doesn't mean you shouldn't smoke marijuana if you want to. That's my opinion. I've been a casual and infrequent user of the herb since 1965 and there is little bad I can say about it's effect on my life. I think it is hypocritical of my generation not to have made grass a legal substance. Most of the people I have known have at least tried it. Many of the people I respect and love the most still use it. Why is grass illegal? More than one person, with knowledge of the subject, has told me that even here in the sticks, the police make exceptions for private and even public use of marijuana as long as the people using it are not involved in other more criminal activity. At first this may seem to provide a little comfort for those who wish to use marijuana and are not likely to rob a convenience store for a carton of Twinkies afterward. But if it is true that the police "tolerate acceptable" uses of marijuana and not others it suggests we are in situation I have always feared and resented. That's the one where everyone is involved in an illegal activity and the police know it. All they have to do is stop anyone at anytime they don't like the looks of and bingo... they're busted. There is a class of victimless crimes like; (1) vagrancy, (2) loitering and (3) speeding, that can used by the police to victimize anybody they choose to go after. I think marijuana should be handled as a cross between the controls on tobacco and the controls on alcohol. Let the private sector package and sell it. Tax the hell out of it. Let the government control the distribution, labeling, ingredient purity and restrictions on it's use. Now this is something that the tobacco companies must have secretly been planning for years. As long as twenty years ago I remember serious reports that Philip Morris was studying brand names, packaging and other related aspects of bringing marijuana to market, if it were to be legalized. There's nothing like planning ahead, unfailingly... if you have the money. Dr. Ronald K. Siegal is a psychologist and sociologist living in California, whose expertise is drug use and it's effects on human beings. Although he has used marijuana and other drugs in the past, he has become a nonuser himself. He acts as an expert witness on drug related criminal trials. A question he is often asked is "Do you use or advocate the use of any illegal drugs?" Needless to say, his qualification as an expert witness would be compromised if he said "Yes". Although he does not today advocate the legalization of marijuana, I mention Siegal because of a theory he has described in detail in his book "Intoxication". The book draws on his extensive experience with psycho pharmacology to clarify some of the issues of use, control and abuse. It seems that Siegal thinks the use of mind altering drugs is due to a fundamental urge as basic as hunger, territorialism, and sexual attraction. Siegal asks the skeptical reader to explain why the drug user will go to self destructive and even suicidal extremes to obtain and use drugs... if the drug user were not motivated by a such a fundamental urge. Siegal even describes the use of mind altering drugs by species other than human beings. A commonly referenced example is wild deer eating (and preferring) fermented apples lying in an orchard. He postulates that the use of such drugs are an attempt by drug users to psychotropically self medicate themselves to relieve stress or pain. There is no evidence that I have heard that the use of marijuana is more dangerous or destructive than alcohol. The attempt to federally abolish the use of alcohol through Prohibition may have been well intentioned, but was a disaster. It helped enrich and organize crime in this country. It made hypocritical criminals out of the police, the judges, the clergy and every other respected, responsible person who had a glass of beer. I know many responsible individuals who have smoked marijuana socially for their entire adult lives and who feel they must hide this fact from their children, parents, employer and the police. I think the first step to a reasonable solution to this problem is openness. If you use marijuana and think it should be decriminalized or legalized, be as honest with as many people as you can. Tell your kids, your parents, your clergy, your legislator. Hell, even tell the police. Don't be afraid. I watched the anit-draft movement in the 60's. A few people were used as examples in Federal cases for burning their draft cards because they refused to serve in Vietnam. But once thousands were burning draft cards at a time, the government backed off. In 1968, during the Whitehall Street Demonstrations in front of the New York City Army Induction center, I burned my card in public (with many others) and never heard a word about it. The Justice Department simply couldn't prosecute the numbers of people resisting the draft law and soon the draft ended. If you want to know more about the effort to legalize and decriminalize use of marijuana, check out NORML (web site). If you have an opinion about this subject please email me. If you wish, I'll be glad to publish your letter. NORML (email) 1001 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 710 Washington DC 20036 Tel 202-483-5500 Fax 202-483-0057 email: norml@norml.org   "Intoxication" (out of print) Siegal (UCLA) Book News, Inc. Portland, OR. Reprint edition (July 1990) Pocket Books; ISBN: 0525247645   Home