DRUG LEGALIZATION DECISIONS ARE BETTER OFF LEFT TO THE STATES

U.S. drug agents launched raids on 11 medical-marijuana centers in
Los Angeles County last month. The U.S. Attorney's Office says the
centers violated laws against cultivation and distribution of
marijuana. Whatever happened to America's federal system, which
recognized the states as "laboratories of democracy"?

According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws, 11 states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine,
Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) have
eliminated the penalties for physician-approved possession of
marijuana by seriously ill patients. In those states people with AIDS
and other catastrophic diseases may either grow their own marijuana
or get it from registered dispensaries.

But the U.S. government says its drug laws trump the states' laws,
and in 2005, the Supreme Court agreed.

This is not the way it was supposed to work. The constitutional plan
presented in the Federalist Papers delegated only a few powers to the
federal government, with the rest reserved to the states. The system
was hailed for its genius. Instead of having decisions made in the
center - where errors would harm the entire country - most policies
would be determined in a decentralized environment. A mistake in
California would affect only Californians. New Yorkers, Ohioans and
others could try something else. Everyone would learn and benefit
from the various experiments.

It made a lot of sense. It still does. Too bad the idea is being
tossed on the trash heap by big-government Republicans and their DEA
goons. Drug prohibition - like alcohol prohibition - is a silly idea,
as the late free-market economist Milton Friedman often pointed out.
Something doesn't go away just because the government decrees it
illegal. It simply goes underground. Then a black market creates
worse problems. Since sellers cannot rely on police to protect their
property, they arm themselves, form gangs, charge monopoly prices and
kill their competitors. Buyers steal to pay the high prices. Alcohol
prohibition in the 1920s gave America Al Capone and organized crime.
Drug prohibition has given us South American and Asian cartels that
finance terrorism. Even the government admits that the heroin trade
bankrolls terrorists. Prohibition's exorbitant black-market prices
make that possible. Drug prohibition spawns gangs that are sometimes
better armed than the police. Drug prohibition does more harm than drugs.

The war on drugs hasn't even accomplished what it promised to do.
Drugs are abundant and cheaper than ever. ABC News reported last
month that "marijuana is the U.S.'s most valuable crop. The report,
'Marijuana Production in the United States,' by marijuana policy
researcher Jon Gettman, concludes that despite massive eradication
efforts at the hands of the federal government, 'marijuana has become
a pervasive and ineradicable part of the national economy.'" The
destructive failure of the drug war is why it makes so much sense to
let states experiment, which 11 of them have done with medical
marijuana. Legalizing only medical marijuana brings its own problems.
For one thing, it invites state authorities to monitor the practice
of medicine to make sure doctors don't prescribe pot promiscuously.
But government shouldn't be the judge of what is and isn't medicine.
The effectiveness of medicine is too dependent on individual
circumstances and biochemistry. One size does not fit all, so
politicians and bureaucrats should butt out.

More fundamentally, why should only people whom the state defines as
sick be able to use marijuana? This is supposed to be a free country,
and in a free country adults should have the right to ingest whatever
they want. A drug user who harms someone else should be punished, but
a peaceful user should be left alone.

Despite my reservations about medical marijuana, the states'
experimentation is still better than a brutal federal
one-size-fits-all crackdown. There is no role here for the federal
government. If the people of a state want to experiment by loosening
drug prohibition, that should be their right. Washington should mind
its own business.