'FRONTLINE': A QUESTION OF FLEXIBILITY, NOT LEGALITY, ABOUT MARIJUANA

The subject tomorrow night is marijuana: how easy to grow, how profitable
to sell, how severe the punishment if you are caught growing or selling or
even just using.

The producers of "Busted: America's War on Marijuana" take no position on
the debate over the laws that have filled prisons with people who have
committed a nonviolent crime, but they do clear the air a little. This
"Frontline" report begins in Indiana, in the heart of what is labeled "the
marijuana basket of America," with the arrest of a suspected grower. Half
of the marijuana used in the United States is domestically grown, and it
serves quite a market; the program puts it between 10 million and 30
million Americans, more than those who use all other illegal drugs
combined. With an ounce of marijuana going for more than an ounce of gold
(now above $300) these days, it's quite a commodity.

The program's experts distinguish marijuana from drugs like heroin and
crack cocaine: it is less addictive, is not known for killing anyone, and
at least one former drug agent notes that the people arrested for marijuana
offenses do not strike him as a criminal element.

But he adds that the serious charge against growers and sellers, which has
brought very heavy Federal sentences since 1986, is marijuana's reputation
as "a threshold drug, the drug that most children start out with." Use of
marijuana by youngsters has been increasing, their age decreasing.

Some users argue for their right to use and even grow the drug for reasons
of health (voters in California and Arizona have passed laws more or less
agreeing with them), religion or, as one activist puts it, the "right of
consumption." But the argument is not so much about legalizing it as about
making the punishment for marijuana offenses more flexible. "Yes, I did
break a law," says a man who was sentenced to five years for growing, "but
I was no threat to the community or to my kids or to anybody else." The
narrator explains: "Because mandatory minimum sentences do not allow
parole, Federal prisoners convicted on nonviolent marijuana charges
sometimes serve more time than convicted murderers sentenced under state
law." Replying to proposals that sentencing should take into consideration
the conduct of the people arrested, for example whether they are involved
in violence or are promoting the drug among the young, hardliners like
Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who heads the Senate Judiciary
Committee and continues to support the mandatory sentences, says, "We ought
to lock them up and throw away the keys."

Glimpsed in this many-sided report is a division in Americans' attitudes
toward marijuana, evidenced by the contrast between the law's stern
approach and the much lighter treatment in popular culture.

Meanwhile the famous war on marijuana goes on, costing the country at least
$10 billion a year. Further inquiry is invited.