Dr Andrew Weil, director of the University of Arizona's program of integrative medicine and a renowned authority on psychoactive drugs, allows that some clinical trials should be repeated but stresses that "on the basis of what we know at the moment, marijuana could be authorized for uses in medicine."

Non-toxic drug

Perhaps the most significant advantage weed offers, Weil says, is the fact that its use entails no side effects. The effects of other, conventional treatments are sometimes so serious that patients have to stop taking them despite their suffering.

"It is so non-toxic -- relative to the pharmaceutical drugs that are used routinely -- that you may as well look for ways to use it, because we don't have anything else in medicine that is so non-toxic."

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Robert MacCoun, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, wrote in a recent report: "In the absence of causal evidence, a strong allegiance to any particular gateway theory would seem to reflect ideology or politics, rather than science."  

Drug War Heresies- Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places (Cambridge, 2001)

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Despite 80 years of drug prohibition, at the cost of billions upon billions of dollars, and at a great loss of our precious civil liberties, anybody of any age that has a couple of bucks can buy illegal drugs. They're cheaper,more pure, more diverse and more widely available than ever before. The illicit drug market is an unregulated, free-market with no age limit and no ID required.

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Lynn Zimmer, a sociologist at Queens College in New York and co-author of the book Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, says the gateway theory is as likely to be true as the idea that early bicycle riding "causes" motorcycling.

Marijuana use "may give you a hint that your kid might be interested in other drugs," she said.  

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What has failed is not the war on drugs but the philosophy of prohibition,just as it failed many decades ago when alcohol was its target. A solution to the ``drug problem'' will be possible when the political dialogue begins to utter the truth about prohibition. Retaining prohibition while shifting funds from incarceration to treatment will merely be changing the signs onthe doors from ``penitentiary'' to ``treatment center.'' And the persecution of the minority who prefer pot over booze will continue, perhaps with a ``kinder, gentler'' aspect, but it will remain a persecution nonetheless. 

       PETER WEBSTER 

International Journal of Drug Policy, Le Cannet, France

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If law enforcers cannot question the validity of law then why are police allowed to set up their propaganda presentations in our schools and shopping malls?  They are obviously vested interests lobbying for stricter laws, more power, and more money.

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"I want to sort of dispel the myth that alcohol causes alcoholism, because it doesn't," says Mel Pohl, service director for Charter Hospital's addictive disease program. "Long before they ever take their first drink, there is a difference in somebody who's got alcoholism or drug addictions from somebody  who doesn't."

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"Everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants tolook at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down yourdoor in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bed room windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."  

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No one was robbing, whoring and murdering over drugs when addicts could buy all of the heroin, cocaine, morphine, opium and any other drug cheaply and legally at the corner drug store. When addicts had access to pure pharmaceutical drugs, overdoses were virtually unheard of. In short, our so-called "drug problems" are almost entirely generated by irresponsible drug prohibition laws. 

We can extricate ourselves from the monstrous disaster drug prohibitionists have led us into by repealing drug prohibition and installing a regulated market for adult drug use that can handle the real problems caused by drugs which are insignificant compared to the costs of drug prohibition.

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Dr Andrew Weil supports  Medical Marijuana

Robert MacCoun rejects the  Gateway Theory

Lynn Zimmer on the failed philosophy of prohibition