A high school student, Andrew Valencia, comments on the recent Supreme Court decision on medical marijuana.

Reprinted from the Fresno Bee (California) August 7, 2005

COURT'S MARIJUANA DECISION IS WRONG

In accordance with a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the state of California has suspended the licensing program that made it legal for its residents to use marijuana for medical purposes.

As a result, more than 120 Californians, most of whom were acting on a doctor's orders, will be stripped of their right to legal access to a proven method of pain treatment. Instead, they will be forced to seek an alternative treatment from among the myriad expensive commercial painkillers, many of which are untested and have costlier side affects than even the most potent strain of pot.

The American public would benefit not only from legalized medicinal marijuana, but from legalized marijuana in general.

One of the principal arguments used in the vilification of marijuana, or cannabis sativa, is that it's a danger to health and to families. But since when does the government have the authority to illegalize anything that is unhealthy?

Furthermore, why has the government singled out cannabis? Is cannabis any more unhealthy to the human body than cigarettes, which have killed more people than any drug in history, and which the American Heart Association calls the leading cause of preventable deaths in this country?

Is cannabis any more unhealthy to the family unit than alcohol, which has broken up more homes than any drug in history -- causing one-third of all divorces, according to Scotland's University of Dundee? If the government can make marijuana illegal simply for health reasons, then it can do the same thing to Big Macs, Snickers, Ben & Jerry's and everything else people enjoy.

Opponents of legalized marijuana are also quick to blame the rise of crime on this drug's use. If you make more things illegal, there will be more people breaking the law. This point is well-illustrated when you consider that organized crime in this country did not flourish until the government criminalized alcohol and forced the need for a large, well-organized criminal infrastructure.

More recently, the prohibition of cannabis showed its dark consequences in Jamaica in the 1980s. Through the help of Ronald Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative, the Jamaican marijuana industry was criminalized, opening the door to heroin and cocaine cartels operated by a few wealthy dealers.

In California, three of the top five reasons for which new convicts enter prison deal with the sale or possession of a controlled substance. That's according to prisonactivist.org, an independent activist Web site based in Berkeley. The site also reports that, as a consequence, Californians spend $5.6 billion on prisons each year, compared to $4.3 billion on higher education.

If marijuana dealers were required to have licenses to sell pot, then the same rules that have more or less kept minors from buying alcohol would keep them from buying this drug, too.

And just as bathtub gin cocktail disappeared after the end of Prohibition, so would the cases of marijuana being sold laced with PCP and other hallucinogens. Consumers would be safer, and dealers would be driven to provide a quality product.

Legalized marijuana, therefore, would lead to a safer society.

Andrew Valencia attends Reedley High School