Former prosecutor: Marijuana isn’t the problem

Dear Editor – (Legalize Drugs – Just Don’t Use Them)

Kudos to state Assembly District 41 candidate Jay Selthofner, the Green Lake resident who seeks to represent Ripon voters. This letter is written in response to the article written by Tim Lyke, “Don’t get high – get real.” (Ripon Commonwealth Press, 7/1/10)

I’m for Jay, not because he is for drug use (he’s not) but because he is willing to look a bad public policy in the eye and somberly say “Enough is enough.” Drug prohibition is bad policy, the worst. How do I know?

I’m a former drug and homicide prosecutor, born in Madison , but raised and worked as an attorney for 40 years in Chicago . Like Jay, I’m against drug use but even more opposed to the so-called “drug war.”

Drug prohibition is the most effective means to put more drugs everywhere – stronger drugs, dangerous, uncontrolled and unregulated drugs. The irony of prohibition is that it makes drugs more valuable, more available, less controlled, stronger and more harmful.

Remember Prohibition? Is still doesn't work.

Drug gangs and drug cartels, like Al Capone of old, are in favor of drug prohibition, because prohibition is the foundation for the business. Unwittingly, prohibition is a system whereby government works day and night to protect the exclusive drug sales franchise of the unlawful forces. Since the bad guys are for prohibition, shouldn’t the anti-drug forces like Tim Lyke be against it? Why side with the bad guys? Why help them?

Prohibition put 6,000 marijuana plants two miles from my family this past September in a Cook County Forest Preserve and the same month brought the first marijuana heist, shootout and pot murder to Orland Park , Illinois .

Drug abuse is bad, the drug war is worse

Marijuana prohibition put 2.5 tons of marijuana in Lyons , Illinois , last week, $20 million worth of grass, America ’s largest cash crop. How’s prohibition helping the sober among us? With prohibition, we seize drugs by the ton and prosecute drugs by the gram. Fool-hearty and bankrupting.

Selthofner is opposed to drug use but he is even more opposed to prohibition. He is opposed for the same reasons I am opposed. Because the drug war doesn’t work. Because it feeds the gangs, causes addict crime, turf-war crime, and fills the prisons to the point we can’t pay for schools, drug treatment, and the economic stimulus of Wisconsin businesses.

sponsored ads do not necessarily reflect the viepoints of Jay Selthofner

Serious and sober Selthofner joins ranks with thinking people like the late Walter Cronkite, late-Milton Friedman, Rep. Ron Paul and Gov. Gary Johnson who also oppose drug use and oppose prohibition. They’re smart and responsible.

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, Wisconsinites must legalize drugs to fight drugs, gangs, cartels, crime, prisons, taxes, deficits, corruption, trade imbalance and the funding of terrorism. Vote smart – vote for Jay.

James E. Gierach (www.leap.cc)