The Steamboat Today, 01 Nov 2012 – In response to the Steamboat Today’s editorial ("Vote no on Amendment 64," Oct. 9 Steamboat Today) and Roger Sherman’s letter to the editor ("Legalization not simple," Oct. 25 Steamboat Today) regarding Amendment 64, I would like to contest that it is, in fact, a simple civil rights issue of whether Coloradans feel they have a right to possess and consume cannabis. The admittedly failed federal War on Drugs is more than 40 years old and has run up a trillion-dollar tab that we are all paying for, as will generations after us. In this same 40-year period we have been deprived of the diverse capabilities of industrial hemp for no reason other than private vested interests.