Dear editor,
I'm gratified to see Thursday's Korea Times marijuana story positioned where it belongs, under a front page headline. I hope you will follow it up by demonstrating the kind of editorial courage that, in other dailies from other times and places has led to positive, beneficial change in a disruptive social circumstance.
It's true that the legal status of marijuana has the potential to be a problem of major proportions in Korea, if the authorities continue, as the Americans foolishly did for decades, to include marijuana in the class of dangerous narcotics, and "declare war" on users, most of whom find real medical benefits in it.
The key to the future is a simple one to find and grasp. It is in the way the public understands and views the facts about Cannabis. Present public "understanding" is myth and superstition based on fear. Some of it is evident in your story. Facts will dispel that fear, and they are readily available to anyone interested. Not to know this, if your duty is to inform the public, is unforgiveable.
Marijuana is not the problem despite what so many believe. The prohibition of marijuana is the problem. Until this error is corrected in the public record, and public officials accept it, then depending on how long it is permitted to continue, the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands, of otherwise law-abiding citizens, including many of the nation's best and brightest, will be ruined by prosecution and incarceration for their involvement with this weed.
At the same time as this social disruption is happening as a result of the demonization of marijuana, thousands will lose their lives to the myriad adverse effects of alcohol and tobacco. There has nowhere been found a single death attributable to marijuana. That alone should be all the evidence thinking people should need to realize that the problem is not the pot, but the prohibition.
I'm gratified to see Thursday's Korea Times marijuana story positioned where it belongs, under a front page headline. I hope you will follow it up by demonstrating the kind of editorial courage that, in other dailies from other times and places has led to positive, beneficial change in a disruptive social circumstance.
It's true that the legal status of marijuana has the potential to be a problem of major proportions in Korea, if the authorities continue, as the Americans foolishly did for decades, to include marijuana in the class of dangerous narcotics, and "declare war" on users, most of whom find real medical benefits in it.
The key to the future is a simple one to find and grasp. It is in the way the public understands and views the facts about Cannabis. Present public "understanding" is myth and superstition based on fear. Some of it is evident in your story. Facts will dispel that fear, and they are readily available to anyone interested. Not to know this, if your duty is to inform the public, is unforgiveable.
Marijuana is not the problem despite what so many believe. The prohibition of marijuana is the problem. Until this error is corrected in the public record, and public officials accept it, then depending on how long it is permitted to continue, the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands, of otherwise law-abiding citizens, including many of the nation's best and brightest, will be ruined by prosecution and incarceration for their involvement with this weed.
At the same time as this social disruption is happening as a result of the demonization of marijuana, thousands will lose their lives to the myriad adverse effects of alcohol and tobacco. There has nowhere been found a single death attributable to marijuana. That alone should be all the evidence thinking people should need to realize that the problem is not the pot, but the prohibition.
Jack Large
Retired anthropologist in Paju
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