DRUG POLICY CHASES WEEDS, MISSES NEEDS

I remember exactly where I was when I heard the space shuttle
Challenger had exploded.

Notebook in hand, I was watching the police toss bales of seized
marijuana into a power plant furnace in Green Bay where I was a
reporter at the time. It was quite the media event.

The aroma was pungent and the message was clear: Watch out druggies.
This is war.

That was 22 years ago, and I have little doubt that dope smoking in
Titletown and everywhere else goes along as usual. It was all for show.

Same with the big pot bust this week in Oak Creek, Franklin and
Sturtevant. Five people were arrested, and more than 2,000 plants were
discovered in four homes that had been turned into the horticultural
equivalent of the Mitchell Park Domes.

Someday the police will seize marijuana plants without feeling the
need to stage a show-and-tell where TV cameras can linger over the
lush greenery. I understand why they always call in the media. It was,
in the words of one police official, a once-in-a-career bust.

But do you feel safer now? Is the problem of drug abuse in America any
closer to being solved? Is this sweep anything but the tiniest dent in
the availability of marijuana for people who want it?

I'm not blaming police. They're on the front lines of an endless and
expensive drug war, carrying out what they think America wants.

But do we? I'd like to see prison space used instead for the repeat
drunken drivers whom we're reluctant to charge as felons because
there's no room to lock them up. They're a real menace.

Show me some news video of a roomful of drunk drivers connected
together in leg irons. That's a lot scarier than these weeds that make
people giggle and crave junk food.

Come to think of it, we should just legalize marijuana for adults and
stop wasting so much time, energy and billions of dollars protecting
people from themselves while locking up otherwise law-abiding
citizens. Keep the harder stuff illegal, but regulate and tax legal
weed. Pretty radical suggestion, I know, especially when you see how
difficult it is to get even medical marijuana approved.

Alcohol is much more dangerous and deadly and ruinous to families, and
it flows legally just about everywhere you go. Marijuana rarely kills
anyone, except when users unwisely and illegally drive high, but its
evil is assumed to be self-evident. Maybe it's that exotic j in the
middle of the word.

Think of the money we'd save by not conducting three-month
multi-jurisdictional investigations like this one that result in a few
arrests and a bonfire. Then we could afford to offer more treatment to
people who abuse drugs and need help more than punishment.

We've taken small steps in this direction. First-time possession of
marijuana is treated as an ordinance violation rather than a crime in
Milwaukee and other places. But then it's hammer time. Subsequent
arrests, even for possession, can turn into a felony and
incarceration.

The drug war is especially brutal, a recent study of Wisconsin found,
if your skin happens to be anything but white. The criminal justice
system winds up having a more detrimental effect on a person than the
drug ever would.

If we did this, I doubt the streets suddenly would be full of people
who lose their train of thought in the middle of a sentence and just
want to listen to Bob Marley. Life is best with a clear head.

Police could stop being gardeners and concentrate more on crimes that
really matter.