LOOKING AT THE POT LAWS

People have been using marijuana and other illegal drugs for many years.

For many, it is a casual thing, usually taking place during their youth and
abandoned as they get older.

Others use it for health or medical reasons.

For still others, however, marijuana use has been a drug they used on their
way to stronger, harder drugs like cocaine or heroin.

It is for people like those -- people who might have turned to crime
somewhere along the way to support an addiction -- that the government and
law enforcement agencies have been conducting a "war against drugs" for just
as many years as people have been using them.

In recent years, however, the laws against the possession, use and sale of
drugs like marijuana have increasingly come under scrutiny.

Some say the dangers of pot use -- even though the drug is stronger today
than 20 or 30 years ago -- do not merit the amount of money and resources
spent trying to prevent it.

Some say we have lost the war against drugs, or at least that it has become
clear that we are not going to win it.

Others, like Georgetown's Steve Epstein, say the laws simply don't work.

Yesterday, the state attorney general ruled that five of seven
marijuana-related questions that Epstein filed on behalf of MassCann, the
state branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws,
would be allowed on the next election ballot if enough voter signatures are
gathered.

Those questions, if approved, would expand the allowable medical uses for
marijuana to include AIDs, and would allow small amounts of legal possession
for personal recreational use.

We have never been fans of making laws through ballot questions, preferring
instead the legislative route that has served our country well over the past
200-plus years. But the attorney general's action is a hurdle cleared for
proponents of the ballot questions.

And one thing that will result, and that we do agree with, is that by
proceeding, a dialogue on the issue will be opened.

This is an issue that should be examined and debated.

The pro-pot arguments are too strong to be ignored, especially for the
medical-use aspects.

Again, we would have preferred to see the format for the debate to have been
before legislative panels with experts for all sides of the issue questioned
by elected officials, rather than played out on pro and con television
commercials, but we think it is time to put the issue before the public.