Reefer Madness in Washington,D.C.
By Doug Bandow

The federal government has been fighting the drug war for decades.
The result? Adolescent drug use is rising. In 1995, more than onethird
of high school seniors said they had used pot the previous year, up from
22 percent in 1992.

What is Washington to do? Escalate the drug war.

For instance,Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms is
threatening to block the nomination of Massachusetts Gov. William Weld as
Ambassador to Mexico because the latter favors allowing the medical use of
marijuana.The Clinton administration is appalled but, then, it continues its
attempt to thwart the will of Arizona And California voters who last November
legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes.Only a recent court
injunction has prevented the Drug Enforcement Agency from implementing
its plan to prosecute doctors who recommend pot and strip them of their
right to prescribe pharmaceuticals,irrespective of how ill their patients
may be.

More broadly, Eric Holder,the U.S.attorney for Washington,D.C.,advocates
tougher penalties for marijuana offences.

"Marijuana violence is increasing.WE need to nip it the bud," claims Holder.

Unfortunately, new enforcement initiatives will only worsen the drug
problem. The crime surrounding marijuana that Holder complains of results
not so much from the drug trade, but from drug prohibition. No one argues
that pot is crimeogenic. People dont smoke marijuana and then commit
crimes.

Rather, killings and robberies inevitably accompany illegal markets.
Dealers fight over turf; sellers and customers rob one another. This was
evident during Prohibitionthe ban on alchol couln not have been better
designed to benefit organized crime, Similarly,marijuana and opium have
been legal in America for more years than they have been prohibited;
only after government forbid their sale earlier this century did crime
envelop them.

A different argument is made by the DEA,s Peter Gruden. The marijuana being
sold today,he warns, is far more potent than that available a decade or
two ago. In fact,the THC content of marijuana today is as much as six
times that of pot consumed during the 1960s.

However,this,too,is a result of drug prohibition. It has always been
easier to find and confiscate marijuana, a bulkier substance,than drugs
such as cocaine and heroin. Thus,dealers have had a continuing incentive
to produce a more compact, easily concealable version of the drug. This
incentive was intensified by governmeny enforcement programs, which
increasingly interdicted shipments from Mexico and uncovered outdoor
plots in America. Production shifted indoors to hydroponic (waterbased)
cultivation,which yields more concentrated marijuana.

Finally, Gruden complains that kids increasingly deal pot, with lookouts
as young as 11. This has nothing to do with marijuana as such, however:
In the 1980s,Washington D.C., for instance,found itself not only
arresting a far higher number of juveniles for drug offenses,but
arresting a far higher percentage for trafficking. This is also
a result of drugs being illegal:drugs are marketed by criminals,who have no
compunction about involving kids, who,in turn,know they will receive
lesser penalties if they are caught.

Notably,children don't wear beepers around school selling cigarettes and
beer.The drug laws are as dangerous as drugs to kids.

Upping the penalties for marijuana offenses and imposing minimum
sentences for nonviolent offenders would only increase the incentive to
rely on kids. And it wouldn't end drug abuse.Nationally,there were nearly
600,000 arrests in 1995 for marijuana,over 80 percent of theman
incredible half millionfor possession alone.

Pot arrests are up 50 percent over the Bush years, and someone is
arrested for a marijuana offence every 54 seconds in America.

Turning drug use,at base a moral and spiritual problem, into a criminal
crusade hasn't worked. Despite 10.5 million arrests for pot offenses
between 1965 and 1995, more than 60 million Americans have used
marijuana. As the police collared even more people during
the 1990s, drug use by children has risen. Arresting and jailing even more
people won't yield any better results.

Its time to change course. Instead of reinforcing the failed policies of
the past,the federal government should follow states like Arizona and
Californiaand especially Ohio, which has reduced penalties for
smalltime growersin deescalating the war on marijuana.

Printed in Orange County Register 6/16/97
author Doug Bandow Mr. Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute
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