JUST A BUNCH OF SMOKE

You'd have to be high to think banning the sale of individual cigars
would stop young people from smoking marijuana - or at the very least,
you'd have to be very out of touch. And yet, last week Prince George's
County became what seems to be the first municipality in the country
to ban the sale of individual cigars. County councilmembers said the
measure will target the common practice of emptying cheap cigars of
tobacco to smoke marijuana. We fear the law will do little more than
spur an uptick in the purchasing of wrapping papers and
paraphernalia.

Still, what's most troubling about the law is the attitude behind it,
which says that anti-drug laws don't always require logical bearing on
reality. And in this sense, the law is indicative of the larger
problem of how we as a society confront society's ills. If history has
taught us anything about prohibition or the "Just say no" motto of the
'80s, it's that officials must honestly evaluate social problems
before they can solve them.

When it comes to marijuana, the Prince George's County Council doesn't
have a clue. Marijuana is certainly not a harmless hobby, as one
extreme sometimes portrays it, but it's not an existential threat to
every child's future, either. The argument behind the county's ban is
that teenagers see blunts glorified in popular culture and smoke them
to be cool. Having to fork over an extra $2 at the 7-Eleven isn't
going to change that.

But to accept the assumption that teenagers smoke marijuana because
they see Snoop Dogg do it in music videos makes broad stereotypes
about who youth drug users are and the ideals they hold. Maybe the
county's efforts would be better spent focusing on after-school
programming. Maybe the county should invest more in drug education.

We're not going to pretend we know the answers to the social ills
public officials perceive in the county, but we do know that to fix
them they need to deal with them openly and honestly. And in this
sense, perhaps county officials could take a few pages from the
university and its students.

More than 100 chapters of Students for Sensible Drug Policy convened
on the campus last weekend to talk about legislative solutions to the
nation's quagmire of a war on drugs. And while we haven't seen any
concrete results yet, the university's six-hour long alcohol summit
last month showed positive steps toward trying to understand a problem
before trying to impose a prescription.

Such parallels may not be as practical on the county level, but that
doesn't excuse the law's misguided assumptions. Ultimately, the law
may give a few kids pause before going to smoke a blunt. And better
yet, it might make those cheap grape cigars a little bit less of a
gateway into smoking tobacco. But it won't address Prince George's
County's social ills. And until public officials can be honest about
them, the county council never will never come up with effective solutions.