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not the government's. You gained your independence from parental-like authority when you moved out of your parents' house and started paying your own way.

If we really want to be objective about this topic, let's look at some statistics from the Center for Disease Control. One immediately notices that tobacco far outweighs any other drug for its notoriety of causing death and disease (more than 430,000 slow, painful deaths per year) yet the only form of tobacco that's illegal in the US comes from Cuba, but that discussion can be resumed in another forum. In fact, in recent years the tobacco industry has refocused the scope of its advertising campaign on different parts of the world where the market is more lucrative, Latin America and Asia being its number one and two targets, respectively. Knowing the dangers of tobacco would seem a logical basis on which to classify the substance as illegal, yet it remains not only legal, but an overly integrated product of the commodity market despite its discordance in public acceptance. Does anyone else sense the putrid irony here? The next greatest contributor to death and disease is alcohol, however, prohibition was overturned long ago and its demand from consumers continues to remain strong today. Aside from its harmful effects, manufacturers don't hesitate to rely on creative propaganda to lure new customers. And as we know, the youth of our society face the highest risk for abuse.

How about the illicit drugs, a.k.a. "the dangerous drugs", let's look at their statistics. Taking into consideration that more people drink and smoke than consume cocaine, heroin and marijuana, the number of deaths still remains proportionately low. There's no denying that cocaine and heroin can be extremely addictive and hazardous, but no more so than the clamped jaws of tobacco which is one of the most addictive substances on the planet. As for marijuana, well, so far there have not been any reported deaths, maybe a few cases of short-term memory loss or the munchies, but no deaths. I find it somewhat qualmish and satirical that while one naturally existing plant (tobacco which has proven to be the most deadly) is esteemed as acceptable for society, other plants (coca, poppy, and marijuana all far less deadly) are demonized and classified to be unacceptable for society. The sensibility in this classification system must have been concealed somewhere in the dark archives of absurdity. In fact, more people in the US die from firearms than

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