Marijuana

I never gave marijuana or marijuana policy much thought until recently. All the money, time, and effort spent on criminalizing marijuana could be put too much better use in so many other areas. Not only does criminalizing this herb waste time, effort and taxpayer money; it unfairly targets those who are for the most part law-abiding citizens, many of whom are only trying to relieve their pain. Patients with cancer, HIV, and many other diseases are able to have a better quality of life, without any additional risk. It's barbaric to make criminals out of these patients, many of whom are dying, for seeking relief from pain using a safe, natural and scientifically proven naturally grown herb.

What about the people arrested for smoking marijuana with children who need to be taken care of when their parent(s) are arrested for using this fairly innocuous herb? Which is the bigger cost to society? Smoking marijuana? Or separating children from the only parent they know, many times to be placed in a much more unstable environment provided at taxpayer cost?


Marijuana has been proven to be safer than alcohol and most of the drugs prescribed by doctors today. Eleven states have passed laws that allow marijuana to be used medicinally, but the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that those laws do not overrule the federal ban.

"Isn't it interesting that when a natural herbal medicine is scientifically shown to have a medicinal benefit, the Bush Administration immediately attacks it for political reasons?" said consumer health advocate Mike Adams, author of Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them. "The power brokers in the United States who control health policy, drug policy and law enforcement policy simply cannot admit to the fact that a medicinal plant has the power to do what no prescription drug comes close to doing: easing the suffering of human beings without causing liver damage or other deadly side effects.
Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) believes that the greatest harm associated with marijuana is prison. To this end, MPP focuses on removing criminal penalties for marijuana use, with a particular emphasis on making marijuana medically available to seriously ill people who have the approval of their doctors.