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Street Level _________________

The drug war grinds on, with grunts burning villagers and their rights at
huge cost while a populace filled with rebel sympathizers pays both sides.
Russ Moritz says enough, at least for the marijuana campaign.

Unnecessary As It Is Unwinnable; Sue For Peace

In a Seattle Bar one rainy afternoon several years ago, I met one of the
largest growers of marijuana in the Northwest. He impressed me with his
marketing skills, his expertise in running a half dozen indoor growing
operations scattered across the city and his freemarket approach to what
was and still is a very lucrative business, thanks to government prohibition.

Charlie Flowers, an apropos alias for this enterprising horticulturist,
claims he was making about 75,000 taxfree dollars yearly from his
threeyearold business. For the next year, we met occasionally over beers.
Then I moved to Idaho and lost track of him. I heard he'd liquidated and
retired to Hawaii.

To greater or lesser degree, there are thousands of Charlie Flowers out
there. Marijuana grown indoors, a Northwest cottage industry, is more
potent, grows more quickly than its outdoor cousins, and commands a higher
price. Wouldbe growers can learn all they need to know from readily
available instruction manuals, Internet sites, and a popular magazine.

Retail shops located in most cities sell all the equipment needed to grow a
crop in any basement: highpowered lights, hydroponic feeding systems, even
room deodorizers to mask the plant's telltale aroma. Grow operations are
more prevalent than you'd imagine an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 in Seattle
alone.

Despite more than 50 years of strict prohibition, millions of people still
grow, sell and use pot. Over that time, the arrest rate has rarely risen
above one in 10.

Paradoxically, high drug profits are generated by strict enforcement. It
makes the business more dangerous, thus raising the price of the product.
It's therefore more profitable for dealers willing to take higher risks.

Drug war myths about pot fail to discourage use. One maintains that
marijuana is a "gateway" to hard drugs. Since the Dutch decriminalized
marijuana in the 1970's, use of hard drugs and even marijuana declined
substantially. If marijuana really was a gateway drug, the use of hard
drugs should have gone up. Actual studies of hard drug addicts reveal they
started with alcohol or tobacco more frequently than with marijuana.

Health warnings are also questionable. Separate research studies of heavy
cannabis users in Jamaica, Costa Rica and Greece failed to find evidence of
impaired mental or physical functioning. Smoking marijuana seems to be
healthier than using alcohol or tobacco.

However, the enforcement of drug laws does pose a threat to the wellbeing
of our civil liberties. The Fifth Amendment promises "no person shall be
deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall
private property be taken for public use without just compensation."

But forfeiture laws allow police to seize your business, home, car, bank
account and personal property if they suspect it was used in the commission
of a crime or purchased with proceeds from a crime this without
indictment, hearing or trial.

Because forfeiture is a civil rather than a criminal procedure, the accused
need never be convicted of a crime. According to one estimate, in 80
percent of assetforfeiture cases the property owner is not even charged
with a crime, and the seized property is used to pad the budgets of the law
enforcement agencies involved.

Quirks in marijuana laws compound forfeiture injustices because sentencing
judges consider the number of plants instead of their actual weight. For 49
plants of fewer, Drug Enforcement Administration guidelines calculate each
plant will produce 3 1/2 ounces of marijuana, whether the plant is a
15footer or a 3inch seedling.

For 50 plants or more, the estimated yield jumps to an inflated 2.2 pounds
per plant. Under these guidelines, there's no difference between a home
grower caught with 100 plants and a bigtime dealer busted importing 220
pounds of dried marijuana from Mexico.

Current federal drug enforcement programs cost more than $13 billion a
year; state and local programs cost billions more. A third of cases involve
cannabis.

Most of the people in California prisons for drug use at a cost of $100
billion a year are there simply for using marijuana. Rapists, murders,
and burglars are often set free to make space in jails for marijuana smokers.

There are plenty of good reasons why marijuana should be legalized: medical
uses, crime reduction, trade deficits, new product markets for hemp, tax
revenues. For example, according to a recent national drug abuse survey,
some 19.5 million Americans use marijuana at least once a year, 5.3 million
at least once a week, and 3.1 million daily. Assuming a tax of a buck a
joint, you get a rough idea of the revenues to be raised from legalized
cannabis.

But the truth is, most marijuana users just want to kick back, smoke a
joint, and get high without the cops breaking down the door. The socalled
war on drugs is a failure simply because prohibition doesn't work. Alcohol
prohibition didn't end its use, but it did enrich organized crime and
taught ordinary people disrespect for the law.

The same is happening today. Can we really respect authorities who
willingly ruin a person's life for possession of a drug with the abuse
potential of a sixpack of Bud?

Judges, mayors, prosecutors, congressmen, civic leaders liberal and
conservative alike acknowledge that the war against marijuana is
unwinnable. The drug continues to be easily available to millions who want
it, and the losing fight against a simple plant that grows almost
everywhere is costing us too much money that would be better spent on just
about anything else.

Considering everyone who has puffed pot from Bill Clinton to Newt
Gingrich the war on marijuana seems a strangely foolish, hypocritical
exercise. Moreover, it's a dangerous weakening of basic civil liberties and
an imposition on the reasonable expenditure of taxpayer money.

At least with this relatively innocuous drug, it's time to admit we've lost
the war and make the best peace we can.

Russ Moritz lives near Sandpoint (ID) as a freelance copywriter and
book indexer, active environmentalist, sometime writer of essays, computer
hacker, woodsman and best friend to a dog named Ben. Moritz is a member of
The SpokesmanReview's Board of Contributors.