MARIJUANA INITIATIVE SHORT ON...UH, UM, WELL, YOU KNOW

Let me see if I have this right. Denver voters are being asked to cut
off our index finger on the theory that such a mutilation is a darn
sight better than cutting off our thumb?

That seems to be the logic behind Initiated Question 100 on the
current municipal mail-in ballot. Crafted by our old friends "SAFER,"
the measure directs the local constabulary to put enforcement of state
or federal statutes against marijuana as their "lowest law-enforcement
priority."

SAFER is the group that in 2005 persuaded Denver voters to approve an
initiative that made possession and use of an ounce or less of
marijuana legal for people over 21. Alas, Denver's finest continue to
enforce existing state and federal laws against the evil weed.

SAFER gets its name from its premise that smoking dope is safer than
getting drunk -- for both the substance abuser and society as a whole.
As long as the question is limited to relative risks, SAFER has a point.

Heavy marijuana use produces a condition I'll call "cat litter for
brains." That's obviously a euphemism. But my editor, Dan Haley, has
considerably higher standards for opinion pieces in The Denver Post
than J. David McSwane uses for the editorials he prints on toilet
walls or, occasionally, in the Rocky Mountain Collegian at CSU. So a
euphemism will have to do.

In the SAFER Doxology, glory rests on those who blow weed until they
go glassy-eyed and mutter really intelligent comments like, you know,
like, uh, you know, like, you know, like, uh, you know, like, uh, the
things dopers, like, uh, say.

That's better, we're told, than getting drunk and getting into bar
fights.

That conclusion is reasonable. But the premise -- that we must somehow
do something stupid -- is wrong. Smart people don't abuse marijuana,
alcohol or any other drug.

Even the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project dealt a punishing,
if inadvertent, blow at pot use in a recent e-mail to me: Marijuana is
much less addictive than alcohol, with just nine percent of users
becoming dependent as opposed to 15 percent for booze.

Yes, that proves cutting off your thumb is indeed worse than
amputating your index finger. But admitting that 9 percent of
marijuana users become dependent on the drug is hardly an argument for
promoting its use. It's just dumb to assume that alcoholics would
somehow abandon John Barleycorn to be faithful to Mary Jane. So
legalization of both drugs would probably mean about a fourth of
society -- the existing 15 percent boozers plus the 9 percent dopers --
were no longer productive citizens.

So, should we all vote against Initiative 100, as the political
establishment is almost unanimously exhorting us to do?

Uh, not necessarily. We once tried outlawing booze, which is also bad,
only to find out that prohibition created a criminal empire that was
even worse.

Pot prohibition also makes a bad thing worse. If the drug were
legalized, regulated and taxed on a nationwide basis, we could focus
on keeping it out of the hands of kids. Prohibition makes it just as
big a felony to sell to a 60-year-old glaucoma victim as to a
14-year-old kid, so drug dealers have an incentive to recruit new users.

Legal regulated sales would take the profit out of the criminal
marijuana business, which amounts to a staggering $130 billion a year,
untaxed, underground empire, according to that same Marijuana Policy
Project. Licensed sellers who sold to kids would not only lose their
license, they could go to prison.

Marijuana is a bad thing, but it's one of those bad things best
controlled by regulation, like booze and prostitution. Of course,
passing Initiative 100 won't lead to such a rational reappraisal of
our counterproductive federal drug laws. Still, it's the only vehicle
at hand to send a message to the federal government that it's time to
stop the madness of our War on People Who Use Drugs.