MOVING TOWARD A MORE SENSIBLE DRUG POLICY

Canada is just finishing a round of radically liberalizing its
marijuana laws. For many UI students, this is good news: more
marijuana, more legal, and closer to home. Particularly novel is that
Canada will soon legalize marijuana farming for the medicinal market.

This is a step unseen throughout the world. Hash use is widely
permitted in many European countries. Several states have attempted
to legalize pot for pharmaceutical use. However, none but Canada has
gone so far as to permit private marijuana production.

Canada has only recently acted because an Ontario appeals court ruled
that marijuana laws would be lifted unless Canada reworked its law to
allow medicinal use of marijuana. Although this move was recent, it
has led to broad liberalization of marijuana laws, and some are
talking about going further. Joe Clark, the head of Canada's Tory
party, has suggested full decriminalization.

Unfortunately, we in America are too benighted to move forward in
liberalizing our drug laws. Our federal laws contain no medical-use
exception. And, as the Supreme Court recently pointed out, state
medical-marijuana laws do not make such an exception suddenly exist.
Indeed, the tack of federal drug law in America is frightening enough
that it should force even die-hard government-loving liberals to
reconsider their support for the behemoth state.

Consider that under former President Clinton, a federal offender was
incarcerated twice as long for drugs than for manslaughter. The
federal government spends more than $17,000 per mile of border and
coastline to stop drugs from entering, and then the vast majority
still get in. Consider that marijuana has become the fourth-largest
cash crop in America, with marijuana production being valued at five
times tobacco production. At the same time, we are eroding our
Constitution with a failed War on Drugs that more resembles a War on
the Bill of Rights.

It is mind-boggling that Americans can look at these facts and
support the failed War on Drugs in general, let alone the prohibition
of marijuana. Indeed, in light of what should be done, Canada looks
as though it is taking mere baby steps that the United States should
take immediately. In fact, U.S. drug policy is not only having
deleterious effects at home, it is also making huge impacts abroad.
U.S. demand for illicit drugs funds criminal organizations worldwide.
Both Mexican President Vicente Fox and Uruguayan President Jorge
Batlle have suggested that little can be done in their countries
until the United States moves towards legalization. Batlle even went
so far as to point out that Colombian rebels would be defunded and
the civil war there would be over if the United States legalized
drugs.

Although the situation looks grim, it appears that the United States
could have a shift of its own on drug policy. Support for
liberalization of drug laws is no longer limited to a few pot-heads
from NORML. According to an ACLU study, 79 percent of Americans
responded favorably when asked if a doctor should be able to
prescribe marijuana. The number rises to 85 percent for prescriptions
where marijuana has been proven effective.

However, support does not end there. A rising number of conservatives
have made libertarian statements supporting liberalization. Among
them are Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, Republican Rep. Ron Paul,
R-Texas, former Republican Vice President Dan Quayle, and former
Reagan Secretary of State George Schultz.

One of the biggest reformers is Republican Gov. Gary Johnson of New
Mexico. If you go to his Web site (www.governor.state.nm.us), the
first thing you see is his plan to decriminalize marijuana, among
other things. Johnson is so outspoken about it that when the media
asked if he had "experimented" with marijuana, he replied, "No, I
smoked marijuana. This is something that I did. I did it along with a
lot of other people. But me and my buddies, you know we enjoyed what
we were doing."

But, you don't have to be a pot smoker like Johnson to support a move
towards drug-law liberalization. I've never tried illicit drugs; I
don't even drink alcohol, a drug far worse than marijuana in my
opinion.

The facts speak for themselves. Canada has done what is minimally
necessary to have a sane approach to drugs; full legalization would
be an even better approach.

Even if you think drugs are bad and people shouldn't use them, then
that does not mean that imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people
for drug crimes is the solution. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman
pointed out, "Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount
of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive
of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and
order?"

I cannot.