Your View 1/7: Who's right?

I take great offense to the letter cited by you from the president of the National District Attorneys Association, Dan M. Alsobrook's saying (1) they (those of us who wish to legalize drugs) do not mind deceiving the American public as well. (2) And to absurd claims about marijuana from Scott Burns, a bureaucrat at ONDCP.

One question: Do you trust the world's leading medical journal for over a century, The Lancet, or U.S. politicians, police and bureaucrats to more accurately assess marijuana?

The Lancet: "... on the medical evidence available, moderate indulgence in cannabis has little ill-effect on health...." (1)

"But decriminalization of possession does not go far enough in our view.... Sooner or later politicians will have to stop running scared and address the evidence: cannabis per se is not a hazard to society but driving it further underground may well be." (2)

How can Lancet be so at odds with U.S. propaganda? One of them is lying. Guess who?

I have been fighting modern prohibition, the drug war, for the basic reasons that my parents fought alcohol prohibition. It doesn't work and it does great damage to our children and society. And, like nearly all of my friends who help lead state groups for the drug reform movement, I personally haven't taken a penny in over seven years of our "well financed" fight.

The modern phase of the drug war was first brought to you by the same folks who brought you Watergate. See E. Jay Epstein's "Agency of Fear," Dan Baum's "Smoke and Mirrors," Alan Bock's "Waiting to Inhale" and Mike Gray's "Drug Crazy" - among many, for the remarkable history of government duplicity regarding drugs from decade to decade since 1914 (and earlier).

Jerry Epstein, Houston, Texas