Pot Crackdown Is Misguided Effort

An article Aug. 13 about a recent pot farm discovery in Ventura County asserts that the rising street value of marijuana has increasingly brought more organized and more criminal crime organizations into the pot business, typically those already involved in heroin and cocaine trafficking.

If this is true, law enforcement, politicians and a hysterical, misinformed public resorting to a fruitless “war on drugs” have themselves to blame for this escalation. Increased risk for even mere possession of small quantities of pot, along with stepped-up destruction of marijuana farms, has led to higher and higher street value for this drug.

The heavy criminalization of marijuana is ludicrous. What is the difference between the legal act of having a couple alcoholic beverages and the illegal one of puffing a marijuana joint? Come to think of it, the differences are great. For example, marijuana has a much lower toxicity than alcohol, and it is also far less prone to dispose its users to violent and/or irrational behavior.

And that does not even begin to explore the many documented medical uses of cannabis for maladies such as glaucoma, AIDS, MS and others. As has been said, “I’ve never seen a person passed out in the gutter with a joint in his mouth.” However, thousands upon thousands have been seen languishing in already overburdened penitentiaries. I fail to see how this makes our society safer and better.

MATTHEW R. BIGELOW

Ventura