POT BANS HAVE GOT TO GO

"Legalize it," sang reggae star Peter Tosh about marijuana in his hit
dope-smoking anthem of the same name, "don't criticize it." With all
due respect to the late Mr. Tosh, we should probably be doing some of
both.

It's hard to argue in favor of legalizing a substance that makes
people stupid(er) and probably causes cancer as well, but it's even
harder to support the ridiculous marijuana laws now on the books.

The most recent reminder that U.S. marijuana laws are wrong came last
week with the release of a comprehensive study on the plant's medical
uses. The study, commissioned by the hard-line National Office on Drug
Control Policy, concluded that people who suffer otherwise untreatable
pain and nausea due to illness should be allowed to use marijuana to
alleviate their symptoms and the side-effects of chemotherapy. The
feds, unmoved by their own report, will continue to deny this small
measure of peace to people with cancer, AIDS and other diseases such
as multiple sclerosis.

Withholding pain relief to prop up failed policies is barbaric, but
our backwards stance on medical marijuana is just part of the national
drug problem. Even as state after state votes to legalize prescription
pot, hyper-strict federal drug laws that treat marijuana as severely
as cocaine and heroin continue to fill American prisons with
nonviolent offenders.

No less an authority than Princeton professor John J. DiIulio Jr., the
influential conservative, wrote recently that people in prison for
drug-only offenses should be released. DiIulio recommends mandatory
treatment for drug offenders, an approach that recognizes drug use as
a health issue, not a criminal one.

Beyond the incarceration epidemic, so-called zero tolerance policies
for marijuana help legitimize the police state tactics common to the
"war on drugs," which has taken on too many of the trappings of real
war. Again, the cure is worse than the problem. Combat-equipped police
units empowered to seize property are a graver threat to the public
interest than, say, a chance encounter with Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

And overstating the dangers of pot can only undermine the credibility
of the public health campaign against more lethal and addictive drugs.
The Drug Control Policy study says marijuana is not a "gateway drug"
that leads to harder narcotics (and of course the whole idea of its
gateway role is a tacit acknowledgment that marijuana is different
from hard drugs), but you've got to wonder if crying wolf on marijuana
doesn't encourage people to experiment with other stuff. Kids who
discover that marijuana is by many measures less frightening than a
common, legal drug like alcohol are likely to question what the
government is saying about other substances.

Society has to draw the line somewhere and ban substances that impose
an unbearable social cost. Heroin and cocaine are clearly too
dangerous to legalize, Prozac is available via prescription (and
freely prescribed), a child can buy caffeine. This nation went one
substance too far when we outlawed alcohol during Prohibition, but we
recognized that mistake and fixed it. We're still working on our
approach to tobacco, with a growing consensus that cigarette companies
shouldn't be allowed to lie about the health effects of their products
and a concurrent libertarian sense that people should at some point be
allowed to make their own mistakes.

Marijuana falls closer to the acceptable side of the line than current
laws acknowledge. Certainly there are arguments to be made against
selling it commercially, but we need at least to make it available for
medical use and to stop criminalizing the possession of small amounts.
There are too many laws on the books aimed at protecting us from
ourselves, and the laws concerning marijuana are doing us more harm
than good.