WHEREAS, the present local, state or provincial and federal laws in the United States and Canada regarding the growing, sale, trade, possession and consumption of cannibus sativa (marijuana) are based largely on public hysteria and myth, rather than on any established data about the effects of marijuana on the user;

WHEREAS, the present laws are making criminals of and causing undue and unjust punishment to many persons who have no criminal intent in the use of marijuana;

WHEREAS, the laws relating to marijuana are not uniform or uniformly enforced, and are being used as political weapons against those people, especially the young, who dissent in politics or lifestyle from the accepted norms of the two countries;

WHEREAS, as yet, no reliable research on the effects of marijuana has shown its use to be as hazardous to the public or the individual user as the use of tobacco, alcohol or many other stimulants and depressants legally available to the public;

WHEREAS, the laws relating to marijuana encourage its use in ways both dangerous to the public and the individual user as did the laws on prohibition in the United States in the early parts of this century;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the 1970 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association: