MAKE POT LEGAL, AND WE'LL BENEFIT

Ah, there's nothing quite like summer in the Sierra.

Mexican drug cartels.

Hidden marijuana gardens.

Camouflaged rangers armed with M-16 rifles seeking out hoodlums toting AK-47s.

Know what?

We can end this desecration of national parks, the threat to public safety
and the drain on taxpayers by dumping the prohibition on adult marijuana use.

Before explaining why America should abandon its failed war against
marijuana, I'll answer the big question.

I've smoked dope. More than once. Unlike Bill Clinton, I inhaled. Then,
like millions of other baby boomers, I matured a little bit and stopped.
But if I had kept smoking marijuana, why is it the government's business?

Adults in this country use alcohol and tobacco without fear of being
arrested or having to obtain those drugs from criminals. Marijuana
shouldn't be any different. The worst thing about it is that it's against
the law.

By deeming cannabis illegal, we waste $10 billion to $15 billion a year
turning citizens into criminals and compound that mistake by turning over
the cultivation, distribution and sale of the drug to gangs.

Make pot legal, and hikers don't have to worry about getting shot because
they stumble into a marijuana grove in Kings Canyon National Park.

Make pot legal, tax it and regulate it -- as we've done with alcohol,
tobacco and gambling -- and everyone but the drug cartels is better off.

A marijuana tax could pay for drug education. Why is a declining percentage
of Americans addicted to tobacco? Because it's been drummed into our heads
tobacco is bad for us.

The tax also could help fund schools and public safety. Freed from chasing
down otherwise law-abiding pot-smokers, police could focus more on violent
criminals.

Farmers would benefit, too. Instead of growing food and fiber subject to
market volatility, they'd have a guaranteed cash crop. There might not be a
better place than the San Joaquin Valley -- with its long growing season
and fertile ground -- to grow the stuff.

One objection to legalizing pot is children would have more access to the
drug. Actually, they'd have a harder time getting it. Legal pot would
reduce the black-market trade, and approved sellers would risk losing
lucrative licenses by making underage sales.

Besides, how could pot become any easier to get than it is now? Two Fresno
middle school teachers I talked to last week said it's readily available on
their campuses.

Legal pot sounds like a radical idea, but it isn't. William F. Buckley Jr.,
flag-bearer for American conservatives, says marijuana prohibition is
costly and hypocritical.

Last month in National Review Online, Buckley wrote: "General rules based
on individual victims are unwise. And although there is a perfectly
respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those
who reject that case, or give way to weakness of resolution, are very
difficult to defend. If all our laws are paradigmatic, imagine what we
would do to anyone caught lighting a cigarette, or drinking a beer. Or -
exulting in life in the paradigm - committing adultery. Send them all to
Guantanamo?"

In other words, our marijuana laws smell like they were written by someone
smoking too much pot. They need reform.