LEGALIZE AND TAX POT

Speaking as a former federal law enforcement
officer, a retired elementary school counselor, a taxpayer and most
importantly, a parent, I would like to respond to a recent Express
article, "The end of reefer madness?"

We can argue from now until
Doomsday whether marijuana is a deadly gateway drug; a simple plant
like any other, neither inherently good or evil; or a great boon to
mankind given to us a loving creator. The true debate needs to be, is
prohibition the best way to deal with the dangers, real or imagined,
of marijuana?

Marijuana is here to stay, deeply ingrained in our
society. Thinking we will ever achieve the utopian vision of a
"marijuana-free society" is just so much wishful thinking. Seventy
years after marijuana prohibition was first enacted and 35 years after
President Nixon declared a "War on Drugs," marijuana is cheaper, more
potent, more prevalent and more available than ever before.

Prohibition takes all control over who manufactures and distributes
marijuana and who it is sold to away from legitimate government
oversight, and hands it over to criminal gangs. Marijuana prohibition
means no control whatsoever. Marijuana dealers don't ask underage
children to show ID, just the cash.

Regardless of one's opinion on the
relative dangers of marijuana abuse, one thing we all ought to agree
on is that prohibition is the worst scheme possible to control it.
When our grandparents wisely abandoned alcohol prohibition, it wasn't
because they decided booze wasn't so dangerous after all. Rather, they
had the integrity to face the truth: prohibition was making the
problem worse.

Marijuana prohibition is horribly expensive, costing
the taxpayers of Michigan close to $200 million in police, court and
jail costs alone. At the same time it deprives the State Treasury of
hundreds of millions in potential tax revenues, makes criminals out of
tens of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens, and opens the
door to the steady erosion of our privacy and civil liberties.

The
only success of marijuana prohibition has been to guarantee life-time
employment to those doing the prohibiting, and to make a few very bad
people very rich. Marijuana prohibition has been a dismal failure. A
failure made even more glaring when compared to the sensible way we
deal with alcohol and tobacco -- the two most deadly drugs in our
society today.

The solution is obvious. The only question is, do we
have the courage to do it? Or are we doomed to another 35 years of
failure? Legalize, regulate and tax marijuana, so that we can finally
control marijuana.

Greg Francisco

Paw Paw