CASE FOR LEGALIZED POT IS A DEADLY CON JOB

After about two decades as a foreign correspondent, I returned to the
United States to find my country in a war I had barely heard of before. A
lot of young people were dying by swallowing poison pills or injecting the
poison into their veins. Americans took to calling it the war on drugs.

Thousands had died by then, and before long thousands more would be killed
because of organized gangs that were operating all over the world and
harvesting billions of dollars. They still are killing, often gang against
gang, but with far more powerful weapons than they had in earlier days. In
some countries, they even use explosives to force open banks and their
vaults - sometimes by night, often audaciously in daylight.

Quite early, going back to the early decades of the 20th century before the
war started in full, the killers understood that drugs were far and away
the most valuable article of trade around - that they could bring in
thousands or even millions of times more money than the most precious
metals or works of art.

To this day, there is still argument, usually vicious, between Americans
who believe on the one hand that the war on drugs must be won and the
murderous gangs that trade in them stamped out - and on the other hand that
the war is an unwinnable waste and the best course is just to legalize
almost everything.

There are Americans of great knowledge in the field of narcotics who fight
legalization, arguing that users would be led step by step into addiction
to increasingly worse kinds of narcotics. The struggle centers on marijuana
because it is the most widely used illegal drug in the country. The
specialists say legalization of it would create mass addiction and vastly
multiply the cost of drug treatment.

John Walters, the head of federal drug enforcement, says that of the 7
million Americans who need treatment for drug addiction, 60% are hooked on
marijuana. "Marijuana is at the heart of drug problems," he says.

Experts also point out that one marijuana cigarette contains as much tar as
four tobacco cigarettes.

Supporters of legalization say it's cruel to withhold a drug that could
ease the pain of certain patients, such as cancer victims. But there is
nothing helpful in marijuana that is not already legally available in
alternative medications.

This week, the Supreme Court ruled that doctors cannot be punished for
recommending marijuana to patients. That decision does not come close to
settling the differences between opponents or supporters of legalization.

For years I have known, admired and learned from one of the most prominent
specialists in the field: Dr. Herbert Kleber, professor of psychiatry and
director of the division on substance abuse at Columbia University. For
years I've kept a statement by him in my desk that should be the final word
on the subject:

"The pro-marijuana groups have been very clever in positioning marijuana as
a necessary agent for treating a variety of medical problems. They have
succeeded in convincing the voters in a number of states of this. The
reality is that there are either already effective medications for the
indications for which marijuana is being pushed or no evidence that
marijuana would be effective for those indications where no current
adequate medications exist.

"There's an increasing divide between the way the American public tends to
regard marijuana as a medication or as a harmless recreational drug and the
scientific community, which continues to define the danger related to
marijuana. For example, marijuana has now been shown to cause physical
dependence and physical withdrawal.

"There are hundreds of thousands of people who seek treatment every year
with marijuana as their primary drug. Unfortunately, the American public
too often is sold a bill of goods by a clever campaign funded by a small
group of billionaires who have engaged in extraordinary advertising and
political manipulation."