FEDS SWAT POT TO KEEP VICE MARKET CORNERED

To save us all from sin, government agents, thicker than a murder of crows,
swooped down on some Ashtabula County cornfields last week and nabbed
bushels of marijuana plants.

"Every plant I pull is $1,000 out of a drug dealer's pocket," an undercover
agent told the PD's John Horton. "We're taking their dope and their dough
away."

Stirring words. But in the government's silly war against drugs and sin,
the great marijuana raid was the pot calling the kettle black.

The only reason marijuana isn't legal is because the government hasn't
figured out a way to tax it. In the so-called war on drugs, the government
is the biggest drug kingpin. And, like any drug lord, the notion of sin is
out as long as the revenues come in.

The government controls the nicotine industry in America. But you don't see
undercover agents tramping though the tobacco fields of Virginia and the
Carolinas pulling up broadleaf. Cigarettes have been called as addictive as
heroin - far more addictive than pot. But cigarettes are legal. And they'll
stay legal as long as the government can tax them.

And then there's booze. Let's guess how many more deaths booze causes than
marijuana. My guess is 50-to-1, and that's ridiculously conservative. But
you don't see any feds armed with hatchets busting up the Jack Daniel's
whiskey factory.

No. When the feds go out on a salvation binge, they sneak up on some
moonshiner in West Virginia and wreck his still. He's making the same stuff
the fancy stills are making. The only difference is he's not paying off
Uncle Sam. So is this a morals fight or a money fight? Forgive the question.

Like any vice kingpin, government was not content just to run nicotine and
booze. It wanted more. So it moved into the numbers racket. And having
moved in, it eliminated its competition.

A front-page story is this paper a while ago showed us mug shots of some
guys who were arrested because they ran a numbers racket. I looked at the
story and had a hot flash of deja-vu.

When I was a young reporter, numbers busts were good for five paragraphs
almost every day. We wrote them as if they were horrible crimes. This was
somewhat disingenuous, since we knew the numbers guys were booking bets
back in the Linotype room.

Our paper ran what we called a Stocks Final edition. The numbers guys
pegged their payoffs to a number in our stock table. So, about 3:15, the
phones on the city desk began to ring.

"Hey, man, watchoo say? How'd the stocks do today?"

Finally the state, smelling money, had had enough of this. It invented the
lottery and moved into the numbers racket and elbowed out its competition.

That's why those numbers-racket guys showed up on Page One the other day.
What was their real crime? Giving better odds than the state gives. And, of
course, not paying taxes.

As long as there's a payoff, sin ain't sin and vice ain't vice. And that,
my friends is an old, old story. Blackmail always follows sin. And the
reason government has its knickers in a twist over pot is because
government hasn't figured out a political way to cash in on it.

Legalizing marijuana is long overdue. It's probably time to say that I
don't smoke the stuff myself. I tried it twice back in the '70s when
everybody was trying everything. But it just wasn't my thing.

I do know people who smoke it. Lots of them (no names please) got on the
phone after the great cornfield pot raid made the paper. They wondered
whether the publicity would affect their stash.

That's their problem. As a non-user, I look at pot in a different way.
Medical research shows it can ease the pain of cancer sufferers. Yet some
states ban it for that purpose. Why? Because we're fighting a war on drugs,
that's why! And pot is a political hot potato.

It's time for a reality check. I don't want to pay taxes to put a narc
scarecrow in a cornfield. It's time to call off the war against marijuana
and admit it was a failure. Let's squander the tax money someplace else.