A DRUG EPIDEMIC THAT SHOULD SCARE EVERYONE

You've probably seen the billboard in the photoe
at the end of this column, or one like it. The Partnership for a
Drug-Free Community has 11 anti-marijuana signs in Madison County,
thanks to a federal grant.

It's a good idea because marijuana is illegal. It is (at least)
psychologically addictive. It can damage your brain. It contains,
Deborah Soule, the director of the Partnership says, 400-plus
carcinogens. It's a gateway drug.

Or....

It's a bad idea because marijuana is no worse, and it some ways better
(less likely to produce violence, for example), than alcohol. It's
continued criminalization ruins people's lives unnecessarily; it
promotes a criminal entrepreneurial culture. And, as a former Harvard
University professor said on TV the other night, there has never been
a documented case of death because of marijuana toxicity. Some doctors
even say marijuana has legitimate medical uses.

But I'm not here to argue that our marijuana laws are right or wrong,
good or bad. Or that those who favor decriminalization - or at least
giving its use a a nod and a wink, which most advanced nations, do -
is correct.

What I'm trying to say is that reasonable people can disagree on the
issue. It's legitimately debatable.

Whereas, I have never seen, read or heard anyone say that
methamphetamines are in any way safe, socially acceptable or in need
of decriminalization.

I would guess that the only person who has anything good to say about
the drug is the person trying to sell it to you.

Let's put it another way, the way a Huntsville police officer put it
to me: "We may have a marijuana problem, but we've got a meth
epidemic." He told me that last week, when U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer and a
horde of law enforcement officers from this area were discussing how
best to try to inoculate us from the meth disease.

So why have Soule and the Partnership put up the anti-marijuana
billboards and ignored the methamphetamine issue.

First, the billboards are up because the Partnership got a federal
grant to put them up. If you ran an anti-drug agency, would you have
turned the money down?

Second, it's not true that the Partnership has ignored the
methamphetamine problem. They've held town meetings. They've
distributed literature. They are planning more anti-meth programs,
including updating local merchants on what to look for in terms of
purchases that ersatz chemists use to make methamphetamine.

Still, the question remains: With meth such a growth industry, and its
customers so prone to violence under its spell, and so ready to beg,
borrow or steal to support a psychological and physiological need, why
not focus most resources on it?

Soule agrees methamphetamine presents us with a clear and present
danger, but says that the Partnership can't ignore the marijuana
problem, which she says every high school in this city faces. "You
have to take a stand," she says.

I applaud Soule for doing that. I don't doubt her sincerity, hard work
and concern for young lives.

But there are lesser and greater evils in the world. I will wager that
sometime - probably not in my lifetime - marijuana will be regulated
the same way alcohol is regulated. The winds of change inexorably blow
that way.

That will be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of
view and on the consequences of such actions.

But I'll also wager that meth will never be legalized. Nor should it.

The big question is whether we can control it. So far, we're failing
miserably.

Maybe a more concentrated focus on it would help.

David Prather's column appears each Wednesday on the Commentary page.