PROHIBITION ENDED 75 YEARS AGO, BUT WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

As we approach the 75th anniversary of the end of alcohol Prohibition
on December 5, it's worth noting how little regret there is among
Americans for ending this well-intentioned but ill-conceived
experiment. Indeed, in September, even Congress passed a resolution
praising the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which ended
Prohibition.

After Prohibition's "dramatic increase in illegal activity, including
unsafe black market alcohol production, organized crime, and
noncompliance with alcohol laws," Congress noted, the repeal of
Prohibition allowed the creation of "a transparent and accountable
system of distribution and sales" that generated "billions of dollars
in Federal and Sales tax revenues and additional billions to the
economy annually."

And yet our marijuana laws demonstrate we really don't understand why
Prohibition failed.

While most Americans are familiar with what went wrong during that
1920-1933 period of alcohol Prohibition, some have forgotten. So
forgive me if you've heard this one before:

What started as an attempt to improve the nation's health and
productivity, reduce the societal costs of alcohol abuse, and cut
crime rates had the exact opposite effect. After a dramatic drop in
alcohol use in the first year of Prohibition, use rates soon rocketed
back up.

The entire alcohol industry was controlled not by licensed, regulated
businesses, but by violent criminals willing to assume the risks of
trafficking an illegal product in exchange for obscenely high profits
- -- profits inflated by alcohol's very illegality.

This new underground environment also transformed alcohol as a
product. Bootleggers discovered there was more money to be made with
more potent forms of liquor that could more easily be smuggled and
hidden. Stealth and transportability, rather than safety, became essential.

And rather than reducing crime, alcohol Prohibition made pretty much
everybody criminals, creating an unheard-of level of gang violence and
police corruption.

By 1933, these factors, plus the Great Depression and the urgent need
for tax revenues that could once again be generated by legal alcohol
sales, had caused public enthusiasm for Prohibition to wane. Repeal
came quickly and was relatively uncontroversial.

But 75 years later, we still think we can prohibit a popular, socially
accepted drug -- marijuana (which, by the way, is undeniably safer and
less addictive than alcohol) -- despite all the evidence that
marijuana prohibition isn't working.

There are, of course, some differences. The argument for prohibiting
alcohol contained its share of condescending bigotry, notably toward
recent Irish immigrants thought to be most in need of laws forbidding
alcohol use. But marijuana prohibitionists relied far more heavily on
racist fear-mongering -- particularly against African-Americans and
Latinos, who still bear a wildly disproportionate share of marijuana
arrests.

And unlike alcohol, which was already popular and widely accepted at
the time it was banned, only about two percent of the population had
used marijuana when it was effectively made illegal in 1937. Many
people had never even heard of it.

But the terrible results of prohibition remain uncannily consistent.
For one thing, marijuana use rates have increased 4,000 percent since
it was first made illegal. More than 100 million Americans, all
technically criminals, have tried marijuana - that's about 40 percent
of people aged 12 and older.

According to a 2006 report by George Mason University public policy
expert Jon Gettman, marijuana is now by far the largest cash crop in
America. At $36 billion a year, it exceeds wheat and corn combined.

Because we refuse to establish sensible regulations and controls on
the manufacture and sale of marijuana, every cent goes to criminals
and violent gangs. They pay no taxes and answer to nobody for selling
to children or operating in an unsafe or irresponsible manner, just
like the bootleggers of old.

And yet, according to the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Reports, we
arrest more than 872,000 Americans a year for marijuana offenses, and
that number has climbed every year for the past five years. That's one
marijuana arrest every 36 seconds. And nearly 90 percent of those
arrests are for simple possession - not dealing or
manufacturing.

We now wisely recognize that there's a difference between alcohol use
and abuse. We focus on the real, tangible problems associated with
alcohol, such as alcoholism, underage drinking, and driving under the
influence. But we leave responsible, adult drinkers alone.

It's time to learn from our mistakes and treat responsible, adult
marijuana users the same way. That way, we can bring marijuana under
responsible controls and end the monopoly we've handed to gangsters.

Rob Kampia is executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in
Washington, DC.