Prosecutors are urged to fight against legalizing drugs like marijuana

Standard Democrat(Mississippi) | 12/29/02 | Scott Welton

[Sparta]

BENTON - Prosecutors around the country are being urged to take a stand against attempts to legalize or decriminalize controlled substances - in particular, marijuana.

“Those who support drug legalization are well funded and highly adept at manipulating the media,” reads a Nov. 1 letter to prosecutors from the president of the National District Attorneys Association, Dan M. Alsobrooks. “And they do not mind deceiving the American public as well.”

The letter warns of “incremental victories” by those in favor of legalizing drugs and notes the “key role” local prosecutors play in anti-drug efforts.

Included with the letter was an open letter also dated Nov. 1 from Scott M. Burns, deputy director for state and local affairs for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, urging prosecutors “to take a stand publicly and tell Americans the truth” about marijuana and warning of “deceptive campaigns to normalize and ultimately legalize the use of marijuana.”

“I think it would be a nightmare to legalize it,” agreed Scott County Assistant Prosecutor Paul Boyd. “It would lead to so many more people out there high operating machinery and other things.” Boyd will be sworn in as the next county prosecutor at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Of the 16 million drug users in America, 77 percent use marijuana and 60 percent of teenagers in treatment have a primary marijuana diagnosis, according to Burns. “No drug matches the threat posed by marijuana.”

Marijuana, Burns writes in the letter, is not harmless but has risen as a factor in emergency room visits 176 percent since 1994, surpassing heroin.

Burns writes of the increasing potency of marijuana and its addictive properties in addition to being a “gateway drug” for many people.

“I would agree that marijuana is a gateway drug to hardcore drugs,” Boyd said. Marijuana is “the great seducer,” Boyd said, because “it breaks down a person’s defense to say ‘no’ to the harder drugs.”

John McMinn of Charleston, administrator for the Circuit 33 Drug Court, also agrees that marijuana remains a problem for the courts.

According to National Institute of Justice statistics on arrests, 39 percent of the males and 26 percent of the females test positive for marijuana, and 53 percent of male juveniles and 38 percent of female juveniles test positive. “Roughly 80 percent of adult offenders in the 33rd Circuit Court come in with some kind of a drug issue be it alcohol or some other drug,” McMinn said.

“More people enter drug treatment every year because of marijuana as their drug of choice,” he added.

McMinn said a 2001 study of students in grades 8-10 showed 20 percent of 8th graders had used marijuana and 9 percent were current users, defined as having used the drug within the past 30 days. By the 12th grade, nearly half of the students had tried marijuana and 22 percent were current users.

McMinn does think research on medicinal and therapeutic properties should be pursued: “There is still so much research left to be done regarding the use of marijuana - the good and the bad.”

However, “there are other drugs that will work as well as marijuana,” he added, with some of the alternatives being more addictive and others that are just as effective while being safer.

[vin-one]

KC, We will be cheering the fact the gov't is out of our backyards,
looking for that evil weed. You just don't get it do you?

[firebrand]

There are other factors in the universe besides chemicals.

[jayef]

So you smoked "wet"? You do know that this cocktail is quite common? Is this your proof that marijuana is a gateway drug?

[jayef]

For instance.

[firebrand]

"Wet"? OK, it's been a while and I am far away from the lingo and the culture.

What I said is not supposed to be proof of anything. Just a word to the wise. Exclude yourself from that category if you choose to.

[jayef]

So, of the millions of marijuana users, how many do you suppose have tried:

herion?
PCP?
methamphetamine?
cocaine?
alcohol?
cigarettes?
whipitz (NO2)?

[jayef]

I was merely pointing out that it is not some chance occurence that you smoked a joint laced with PCP. It is also important that you understand that there is nothing in the marijuana that made your homeboys pass you a wet one.

[rastus macgill]

Did you have it tested? Or were you pos for phencyclidine.
Did the joint sort of taste like new carpet smells.
I am just curious most reports of pcp or opium "laced reefers" are not true(not that it never happens ).

[jayef]

Buffoon!

[tacticalogic]

My, George Soros's blind and groping little liberdopian nanny socialist wasps are angry this morning. Whack their mud nest with the stick of truth and watch them go beserk.

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

"eventually, if used over a long period, [marijuana] does lead to heroin addiction."

Harry J. Anslinger, testimony to Congress

"Stick of truth", indeed.

[jayef]

If it were, he would know it!

[OWK]

You are the only FReeper who has his own cheering section of fawning sycophants at DU.

really?

Wow... I'm almost famous.

[GrandMoM]

would agree that marijuana is a gateway drug to hardcore drugs,” Boyd said. Marijuana is “the great seducer,” Boyd said, because “it breaks down a person’s defense to say ‘no’ to the harder drugs.”

....NO, that would be alcohol.

[firebrand]

These were amoral druggies, my dear fellow freeper. That is my point. They would do something like this. It was not some chance occurrence. I understand a lot more than you think I do. Stop being so condescending or I'll get my homeboys after you.

[jayef]

Yeah. That's a stick of something allright.

In my family we call it a strunz.

[OWK]

Waddle on home. You have no credibility with genuine conservatives. You are the only FReeper who has his own cheering section of fawning sycophants at DU. I could have predicted that. But the weiners who are still blindly gaga over your stealth nanny government huffery and puffery here at FR wouldn't recognize the truth if popped out of Soros's butt and warned, "Don't go there."

Kevin, you sure are a bitter and angry man.

What is it that causes such profound misery and scorn in your life?

And why the foaming hatred of libertarians?

Jilted by a libertarian love?..

Did a libertarian beat you up and steal your lunch money in grade school?

Did a libertarian best you once too often in chess club?

Whatever it was, let me take this opportunity to apologize for all libertarians. Get a hold of yourself Kevin. You're going to have a stroke.

[jayef]

I'm not trying to be condescending. You made a statement that simply defies logic. You just made another in this post. What in the world does morality have to do with the fact that YOU chose to hang out with some folks who smoke wet? What does any of that have to do with the preposterous claim that marijuana is a "gateway" drug?

[William Terrell]

It said that they tested today's pot and it isn't any stronger than pot was thirty years ago.

It's nice to have a test to verify it, but it's not necessary. 30 years ago, we had cannabis coming here from Columbia, Hawaii, Thailand and a number of other ocuntries that can grow it under the optimum conditions for potency and maintaining the genetic potency in seeds produced.

Now we have low potency domestic varieties from conditions that lower the potential in subsequent seeds. Cannabis is a plant susceptible to chemical changes in the genetic potential of its seeds; colchicine from the crocus colchicum autumal can alter its genetic potential.

If a danger has to be established by lies. . .

[rastus macgill]

No many people who have an unpleasant psychological reaction to dope (often high thc indica) think they have been "dusted" or whatever.Thats where all those emergency room visits cited earlier come from.