This was my letter to Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, after I joined the Drup Policy Alliance Network.  Honestly folks, it's time we stopped this bullshit and started focusing on what works-and arresting people isn't the answer that the law enforcement community has been selling to us all these years.

I urge you to join the Drug Policy Alliance Network also by clicking on the link after the letter!

Senator:

I am writing to you today to urge you to do something for the people you represent that is desperately overdue. I understand that there are two bills now running around in the system that would make marijuana use by cancer patients a protected activity and for personal use by adults a legal activity as well.

Ma'am, I always voted for you in each election since you ran for the Senate and the times you ran for re-election. I also voted for your counterpart Miss Boxer. What I have trouble understanding is how the two of you, who I believe to be intelligent individuals (which means that I believe you have more under the hood than just political moxie) have failed to grasp just how impossible it is to regulate the behavior of human beings, especially when it comes to items such as drug use, alcohol use, tobacco--heck, even porn.

There has never been a successful challenge to the prevention of any of the aforementioned items in human history. And, we are spending tens of billions RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT proving that fact to be correct even as I write these words.

Ma'am, if the threat of burning in hell for eternity cannot scare these behaviors out of humans, then the threat of jail isn't going to do it either. Why is it that the government didn't bring the lessons learned from Prohibition forward into the drug policies?

Of the top three reasons noted as to why marijuana is actually illegal-(1) because it was associated with illegal or migrant workers; (2) Hearst Corp. owned paper-mills and large tracts of forest waiting to be processed and didn't want the competition for paper production and (3) BIG PHARMA hasn't figured out how to make a synthetic version of the natural cannaboids yet, so they haven't been able to slap a patent on it, I think #3 holds the most water.

Frankly, this country should be ashamed and embarrassed at the way we pursue the almighty dollar. We look like a bunch of dogs chasing around the ever desired, always in heat bottom line. Well, in the case of marijuana, it's time to bring this chapter of American injustice to a close. It's time to put some DEA agents into new units investigating crimes that really do matter such as FINANCIAL CRIMES BY CORPORATIONS, CRIMES BY THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH LEADING US TO TRILLION DOLLAR WARS, and so on.

It's time to shut down the 50% of our prisons that are holding our fellow citizen's because they have been convicted of a MINOR DRUG OFFENSE! Doesn't it ever cross the minds of the men and women in the US Congress just how much money this country is wasting on a pursuit that can never be won?

I heard an estimate of $10 Trillion has been spent since the war on drugs began in 1973. What has all that money bought us? We could have purchased South America in total by now! The annual budget for drug interdiction is higher than the amount of estimated illegal purchases, which means, in a sense, that if the government was really, truly exercising this war for the benefit of the citizens, then it would be cheaper and more efficient to simply purchase the entire supply of illegal drugs outright, thus preventing them from reaching their markets (with cocaine and heroine). But, that wasn't what this has been all about-it's all about money, jobs, power, and abuses (need I mention Iran-Contra).

Ma'am, there is one more thing that I believe that you need to do for California. Right now, several people are in federal prisons for LEGALLY DISTRIBUTING marijuana under California laws to persons with prescriptions from medical doctors. These folks have been given unbelievable sentences of 20 years or more! As one of the representatives of the People of California at the federal level, I implore you to either introduce legislation that would release these people or speak on behalf of your fellow Californian's to Obama to get a pardon set up for all of them.

When I read that the Assembly was considering legalization of personal use and sales in retail outlets, I was stunned. We haven't even helped the people we have allowed to go to jail that helping CANCER PATIENTS for heaven's sake! And now they are considering adding more of our citizen's to the federal pen?

Just think about that last example ma'am. Don't you see how ludicrous it is that the federal government is preventing the sovereign states and the people within them from exercising their rights as an informed and intelligent citizen to determine whether or not to allow the cultivation, sales and use of a PLANT that has been used throughout our nation's history, even by the Founding Fathers?

I apologize if I am sounding a little preaching. Frankly, I am beginning to wonder how our nation has gotten itself onto such a wrong path-where war against its own citizens is looked at with such nonchalance and unconcern from our elected leaders and our own neighbors as well.

I hope that you can see fit to help to turn the tide before your service is over ma'am. As this nation becomes more and more polarized, I fear that making choices because they are just and because they help to heal us are going to become harder to accomplish as the 'din of the dumb' overwhelms everyone, as they pound their drums on the radio and the cable...

Thank you.

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