Pot laws termed archaic
WASHINGTON (UPI)—Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell told Congress Monday youths are turning to marijuana by the thousands while authorities wander in a "never-never land" of archaic laws and scientific ignorance.
He called for new laws to clamp down on mobsters and narcotics peddlers, deal more leniently with youthful drug experimenters and draw a more realistic line between "hard narcotics" and less dangerous drugs such as marijuana.
In the last 10 years, Mitchell told the Senate juvenile delinquency subcommittee, narcotic and marijuana arrests increased 16 times to 162,177 last year, with
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youths under 21 rising from 14.1 per cent of the 1958 total to 56.5 per cent last year.
"Our young people are, in frighteningly increasing numbers turning to marijuana, hard narcotics and other dangerous drugs as a way of life," Mitchell testified.
Mitchell, subcommittee Chairman Thomas J. Dodd, D-Conn, and Sen. Edward M Kennedy, D-Mass., agreed they were unsure of the dangers of marijuana, which Mitchell made up most of the increase in drug use.
"I was amazed to find there was so little knowledge about marijuana." Mitchell said. "It leaves a sort of never-never land in which we're operating."
He said federal drug laws had loopholes, inconsistencies and "vastly different" sentences for
similar crimes. For example, although LSD is considered "more dangerous to the user," the law provides much stiffer jail sentences for selling marijuana than LSD.
Dodd released the subcommittee's own survey of 89 cities, showing narcotic and marijuana arrests doubled during the past two years.
"The traffic in both marijuana and narcotic drugs is spreading to age groups and economic levels which were previously drug free," Dodd said. "The increased traffic among college students and
young people of middle and upper economic status represents a drastic change."
MANILA (UPI)—Mayer Cesar Cruz of Calumpit Town, 35 miles north of Manila, has ordered construction of a mobile cell resembling a bird cage mounted in a jeep trailer for detaining troublesome drunks.
The cell, big enough to accommodate 10 persons, will be paraded around the town when arrests are made.
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