LEGALIZING MARIJUANA IS SMART PUBLIC POLICY

Last year, the UNC Honor Court charged 18 people with Honor Code
violations for possession of marijuana. According to the FBI, 37,000
people are in jail for the same thing.

Is it worth it? We doubt it.

Even from a strictly economic point of view, keeping a relatively
innocuous drug like marijuana illegal is a dumb move.

While we recognize the government's desire to protect people from
themselves, the risks of marijuana are not worth the costs of
prevention. In 2000, marijuana prohibition cost N.C. taxpayers nearly
96 million dollars. The federal government spent 2.6 billion in 2002 alone.

Marijuana prohibition does not have to be a pit that we throw money
into. If a typical "sin tax" was applied to marijuana usage,
estimates show the federal government would make 1.6 billion, and
North Carolina would bring in 22.9 million each year.

Legalizing marijuana will also open up a new cash crop for N.C.
farmers. The state economy would benefit greatly if farmers could use
hemp and marijuana crops to supplement the struggling tobacco
industry. Snack food producers also would be thankful.

Finally, legalizing marijuana will allow the government to regulate
ingredients and protect the significant minority of people who try it
from filler ingredients that can be more injurious to someone's
health than the marijuana itself.

Some prohibition advocates believe that marijuana is a "gateway drug"
that leads to other, more dangerous drugs. But the science behind
that hypothesis holds little weight.

While it might be true that most users of heroin use marijuana first,
they also use cigarettes, alcohol and a number of other unhealthy things.

(In fact, 100 percent of all heroin users have consumed water at some
point in their past, leading us to suspect that water, not marijuana,
is the real "gateway" to heroin.)

The Netherlands has already decriminalized marijuana, and they're
doing just fine. It's time for the government to stop wasting
taxpayers' money fighting a war it can't win.