The New Drug War

Trey Smith

Gee, things didn't go as planned when President Obama headed to South America earlier this week for a summit with leaders of the continent. Not only was there a scandal involving Secret Service agents, but his fellow leaders urged the president to abandon the failed war on drugs.

“Despite all of the efforts, the immense efforts, the huge costs, we have to recognize that the illicit drug business is prospering,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos told the attending leaders. He even advocated a process of decriminalization, though he recognized this was only a “starting point to begin a discussion that we have been postponing for far too long.”

As I've mentioned many times before, I've never tried an illicit drug. While most of my contemporaries have experimented with marijuana and many use it regularly, I'm not one of them. (I've never been intoxicated with alcohol either.) Despite the fact that I am not a user, I understand that there is no rational reason that marijuana is illegal, but alcohol and tobacco are not.

What gets me is that there is another "drug" -- one I wrote about yesterday morning -- that is a far greater threat to American health and yet, not only is it legal, but we subsidize the production of it to the hilt. The way I see it, if marijuana is illegal, then so should be corn!

Corn is used to make High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and that stuff is truly dangerous! Recent studies have indicated that HFCS may lead to a host of serious health issues, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, tooth decay, Type-II diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and autism. I've never heard anyone suggest that marijuana use leads to ANY of these kinds of problems.

In fact, doctors often prescribe marijuana for

the amelioration of nausea and vomiting, stimulation of hunger in chemotherapy and AIDS patients, lowered intraocular eye pressure (shown to be effective for treating glaucoma), as well as general analgesic effects (pain reliever).

Have you ever heard of a doctor prescribing HFCS for any reason?

Now some people will argue that corn has many uses other than that as an addictive sweetener. But the very same thing can be said of the cannabis plant. Hemp has been grown for centuries for its fiber as well as for its nutritional value. The hemp form of the cannabis plant is physically different (easy to see with the naked eye) from the one used for drug purposes and yet the industrial hemp plant is illegal to grow in the United States!

So, I think we should legalize hemp/marijuana and turn our attention toward stamping out the production of corn! HFCS is a far bigger threat to public health than pot.