AMERICA'S NEVER-ENDING PROHIBITION

America's alcohol prohibition lasted 13 years, filled the
country's prisons, inspired contempt for the law among millions, bred
corruption and produced Al Capone. What it did not do was keep
Americans from drinking.

America's marijuana prohibition drew into its 72nd year this month.

It has created a huge underground industry catering to users, helped
the US prison population balloon into the world's largest, and
diverted the resources of American law enforcement. What it has not
done is keep Americans from using marijuana.

On the contrary.

Since 1937, the year marijuana was outlawed, its use in the United
States has gone up by 4,000 percent, according to the Marijuana
Policy Project, a Washington-based lobby group which advocates
regulating the drug similar to alcohol.

A recent World Health Organization study of marijuana use in 17
countries placed Americans at the top of the list.

The 1920-1933 prohibition on the sale, production and transportation
of alcohol is now seen as a dismal failure of social engineering.
Will the prohibition on marijuana ever be seen in a similar light?
For the first time in a generation, there is a bill before Congress
that would eliminate federal penalties "for the personal use of
marijuana by responsible adults". But not even the congressman who
introduced the bill, Democrat Barney Frank, sees bright prospects for
swift passage.

The last time the US Congress dealt with legislation that would have
decriminalized marijuana was in 1978, when a bill introduced by
Senator Edward Kennedy was passed by the Senate but never got to a
vote in the House. The case for legalising marijuana, the most widely
used drug after alcohol and tobacco, rests on several planks - the
most obvious being that prohibition simply hasn't worked despite
extraordinarily labor-intensive and costly government efforts.

In 2006, the last year for which figures from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation are available, 830,000 Americans were arrested on
marijuana charges, most of them for possession rather than trafficking.

That works out at a marijuana arrest every 38 seconds.

A study last year estimated the cost of these arrests at $10.7
billion. "This is an enormous waste of law enforcement resources that
should be focused on violent and serious crime," says Allen St
Pierre, who heads the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML), the marijuana smokers' lobby in Washington.

With alcohol we acknowledge the distinction between use and abuse,
and we focus our law enforcement on efforts to stop irresponsible
use. We do not arrest or jail responsible drinkers.

That should be our policy for marijuana as well." The Bush
administration's drug czar, John Walters, will have none of this. He
talks about marijuana in terms reminiscent of the apocalyptic
warnings issued by Harry Anslinger, the first head of the Bureau of
Narcotics in the 1930s and a driving force behind the 1937 marijuana
prohibition.

Anslinger deemed marijuana "an addictive drug which induces in its
users insanity, criminality and death." Walters often takes issue
with "the perception that marijuana is about fun and freedom.

It isn't. It's about dependency, disease and dysfunction.

Americans who have admitted smoking marijuana at one point or another
but escaped dependency, disease and dysfunction include President
George W Bush, Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, California
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
Senator John Kerry, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former
Vice President Al Gore and Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for
next November's presidential election.

Former President Bill Clinton falls into a special category.

When he studied in England, away from the long reach of US law, he
experimented with marijuana "a time or two", he once told a
television interviewer. "I didn't inhale and I didn't try again."
Hollywood, conscious of a mass audience that does inhale, has
produced a slew of new "stoner" movies this year. The pot-smoking
protagonists include an investment banker and a medical student
(Harold & Kumar), a psychiatrist (The Wackness), and a process server
(Pineapple Express).

But sympathetic portrayals of marijuana use in popular culture do not
necessarily translate into faster progress towards legalization.
Government anti-drug fighters are serious in their opposition. When
Barney Frank, at a news conference to explain the rationale for his
bill, was asked what timeline he had in mind, he quipped: "Not soon
. but eventually, you'll see the development of a marijuana futures
market." David Murray, the chief scientist in the drug czar's office
who had listened to the briefing, was not amused. "It's not funny,"
he said, "not funny at all." But not impossible either, in the long run.