DRUG CARTELS, POLITICS SNAKES IN GRASS

It is agreed by reasonable people that one of the results of anti-drug
laws is to support the price of drugs and make their sale lucrative.

If drugs were legalized, the price would fall and the motive to
promote them would fade away. Since anyone who wants drugs could get
them, usage would be unlikely to increase. Crime would go down when
addicts didn't have to steal to support their habits and law
enforcement would benefit from the disappearance of drug-financed
bribery, payoffs and corruption.

All of this is so obvious that the opposition to the legalization of
drugs seems inexplicable -- unless you ask who would be hurt the most
by the repeal of drug laws.

The international drug cartels would be put out of business. Drug
enforcement agencies would be unnecessary. Drug wholesalers and
retailers would have to seek other employment.

Who would BENEFIT if drugs were legalized? The public -- because both
drug usage and its associated crimes would diminish.

Despite the logic of this argument, few political candidates have had
the nerve to question the way drug laws act as a price-support system
and encourage drug usage.

Grass, a new documentary by Ron Mann, traces the history of the laws
against one drug -- marijuana -- back to their origins in anti-Mexican
prejudice at the turn of the century and forward through periods when
marijuana was seen as part of the Red conspiracy.

Grass is not much as a documentary. It's a cut-and-paste job,
assembling clips from old and new anti-drug films, and alternating
them with pro-drug footage from the Beats, the flower-power era and so
on. The narration by pro-hemp campaigner Woody Harrelson is underlined
by the kind of lurid graphics usually seen on 1940s coming attractions
trailers.

The film is unlikely to tell many of its viewers anything they don't
already know, and unlikely to change our national drug policy. The
situation will continue indefinitely, corrupting politicians and whole
nations with billions of dollars of illegal profits. Those who use
drugs will continue to do so. Others will abstain, die or find a way
to stop, just as they do now. Prohibition proved that when the
government tries to come between the people and what the people want
to do, laws are not effective; statistically, Prohibition coincided
with a considerable increase in drinking.

Am I in favor of drugs? Not at all. Drug abuse has led to an epidemic
of human suffering. Grass seems relatively harmless, but I have not
known anyone who used hard drugs and emerged undamaged. Still, in most
societies throughout human history, drug use has been treated
realistically -- as a health problem, not a moral problem. Have our
drug laws prevented anyone from using drugs? Apparently not. Have they
given us the world's largest prison population, cost us billions of
dollars and helped create the most violent society in the first world?
Yes. From an objective point of view -- what's the point?

Minireview: "Grass" (R, 80 minutes). Narrated by Woody Harrelson, this
documentary traces a century of laws against marijuana, from their origins
in anti-Mexican prejudice to their use as an anti-communist political
football. Footage from lurid old anti-drug movies is intercut with pro-drug
material (New York Mayor LaGuardia and Jimmy Carter are seen calling for
decriminalization), and it's all entertaining enough, but as documentary
filmmaking, the movie is slight, a cut-and-paste job. Rating: Two stars.

DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE 4520 Main St., Kansas City, Mo.
64111; (816) 932-6600

CP 1743ES 13-06

If it is true (as often charged) that the CIA has raised money by
dealing in drugs, it would lose this source of funds free from
congressional accounting.

When New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia commissioned a study of the
weed, his commission found the "sociological, psychological and
medical" threat of the substance was "exaggerated." He called for its
decriminalization. So, many years later, did U.S. president Jimmy
Carter -- until he had to lay low after an aide was nabbed on cocaine
charges.

Other presidents, of course, have enthusiastically supported anti-drug
laws (Nixon going so far as to swear in Elvis Presley in the war
against narcotics). "Grass" traces much of our national drug policy to
one man, Harry J. Anslinger, the first drug czar, who like J. Edgar
Hoover created a fiefdom that was immune to congressional criticism.

REVIEW

Grass

Rating two (out of four)

Warning: PG: Coarse language

Playing at: Park Theatre