This letter is in response to Gerald Wright's letter of 9-26-97,
in which he primarily refers to the well written story (9-8-97)
by Hunter Bishop. (Hawaii Tribune-Herald) "Ex-Island resident
hopes his pro-pot book will be a hit." The story refers to my
newly published hardback, "Marijuana: Not Guilty As Charged."

Mr. Wright asked 12 questions, including: The costs to society of
the marijuana drug war in terms of wasted lives, and highway safety.
The marijuana drug war is costing tax payers eight billion
dollars a year. Some 30,000 Americans are currently incarcerated
for a "marijuana crime." Eighty-three percent are in prison for
possession only. Thousands for growing their own medicine.

No one should drive a car after using any mind altering drug
including marijuana. However, it's interesting to note a study
conducted by the California Highway Patrol, published in 1986 by
the California Department of Justice, titled "Marijuana and
Alcohol: A Driver Performance Study—A Final Report." To the CHP's
surprise and embarrassment, it discovered that some people
actually drive better after smoking marijuana.

For 60 years the government has said, among numerous other
unproven pseudo-scientific statements that marijuana is
carcinogenic. On Jan. 30th. of this year the Boston Globe
reported a $2 million federal government study attempting to
prove marijuana carcinogenic.

The study found that not only is marijuana NOT carcinogenic,
but that it may even protect against malignancies. (The
government said they had misplaced the findings!)

Marijuana remains in fat tissue for up to six weeks. The Merck
Manual of Diagnosis & Therapy, the doctors encyclopedia, stated
in the sixteenth edition, 1992, referring to urine testing for
marijuana: "The testing that identifies an inactive carboxylic
acid metabolite only identifies use. It has no correlation with
dysfunction, and the smoker may be free of effect by the time his
urine is positive."

Cocaine, opium, morphine are legal, under Schedule Two, by
prescription from a medical doctor. Heroin and marijuana are
Schedule One drugs, meaning that they are too dangerous to
prescribe, and have no medical use. This is deceitful,
hypocritical, and cruel to the ill and dying who have found that
marijuana offers far fewer deadly side-effects than thousands of
drugs in the Physicians Desk Reference, (PDR) which causes the
death of 140,000 Americans each year from adverse drug reactions.

Marijuana prohibition was created by fraud, misrepresentation,
lies, and outright perjury by former drug czar Harry Anslinger.
Anslinger swore before Congress that "Marijuana is the most
violence causing drug in the history of mankind. More dangerous
than heroin or cocaine. It turns people into criminals, and many
marijuana users go insane." That was the basis for marijuana
prohibition. None of those charges are true.

"Marijuana: Not Guilty As Charged" was written to educate
parents; those in government, law enforcement, and medicine, the
media; nonusers and users of marijuana. I'm so certain of my
research that I'm offering $50,000 cash to anyone who can prove
that marijuana is NOT medicine. In answer to Mr. Wright's last
question, I would like to close with a message from Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. "Letters from a Birmingham Jail" (1963)
"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the
question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular?

But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a
time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor
politic, nor popular---but one must take it because it is right.
One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws---an unjust
law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law."

David R. Ford
Sonoma, California