WASHINGTON SHOULD LEAVE POTHEADS ALONE

TWO WEEKS AGO, U.S. drug agents launched raids on 11
medical-marijuana centers in Los Angeles County. The U.S. attorney's
office says they violated the 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. In the United States, 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, "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 officials shouldn't be the judges of what is and isn't
medicine. That should be left to medical researchers, doctors, and
patients. 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?

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. The feds and rest of us
should watch. We might learn something.