To the editor:

“There were plenty of pot smokers on the ’76 team. At least five gold medals and two silver medals were won by athletes who got high,” Jack Babashoff wrote in a 1988 letter to “High Times” magazine. Twelve years after he won a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle at the 1976 Olympics, Babashoff finally came clean about smoking marijuana the night before the race. That should help put this Michael Phelps incident into perspective. He’s not alone.

The FBI reported that there were 872,721 arrests for marijuana in 2007 alone. Eighty-nine percent of those arrests, 775,138, were for simple possession. Harvard University Professor Jeffrey Miron published a report in June 2005 tilted “The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition.” Miron concluded that “legalizing marijuana would save

$7.7 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition” while yielding tax revenue of “$6.2 billion annually if marijuana were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco” (prohibitioncosts.org/mironreport.html). If you have half an hour to spare, watch the ACLU’s documentary at marijuanaconversation.org.

More than 71 million Americans from 13 states have legal access to medical marijuana. The American Public Health Association is one of many medical organizations that support legalizing cannabis for medicinal purposes.

It’s time to stop wasting taxpayer money to make criminals out of upstanding citizens. The ongoing criminal investigation in Columbia, S.C., of Michael Phelps provides a perfect example.

Shane Pelkey,
Lawrence