IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP AND SMELL THE MARIJUANA

Remember in "The Wizard of Oz" when Toto tugged at the curtain and
revealed the fraudulent, unsustainable nature of Emerald City's whole
wizard-centric way of running things? For some reason that image
occurs to me whenever our fine elected officials give their latest
"My fellow Americans, regarding the economy, we're screwed" speech.

Of course we are. Economies based on unpayable debts, rulers claiming
fake magic powers - sooner or later, "Pay no attention to the man
behind the curtain" stops working, so you witness the "Come out and
fess up" stage instead.

It happened in Connecticut last week. Things are so bad here, our
governor went on TV to speechify the state's economic woes. (Note to
out-of-staters: This was a big deal because it's the first televised
speech she's given in her four and a half years as governor. M. Jodi
Rell usually prefers communicating with the masses via more
traditional methods, like parade appearances.)

State tax revenues dropped sharply because people have less money to
tax, which means they can't afford another tax increase. Rell, to her
credit, said she recognizes that. No tax hikes, she says, but budget
cuts will be "painful" and require "sacrifice."

She later noted, "We can do with fewer laws on the
books."

Amen. I personally favor a constitutional amendment mandating
zero-growth legal codes: For every law enacted, an old one must be
repealed.

Meanwhile, we'd save lots of money with the proposal of state
lawmakers Martin Looney and Toni Harp of New Haven, who suggested
following Massachusetts' lead in decriminalizing marijuana on the
grounds that we can't afford to keep arresting and prosecuting people
who use it.

The monetary cost is high enough. There's also the question of
whether an ostensibly free country should have the world's highest
prison population. One-fourth of the world's prisoners are serving
time in the United States, and half of all American prisoners are
incarcerated on drug charges. That's one-eighth of the planet's
prison population whose only crime was using or selling intoxicants
no worse - and in many ways better - than alcohol.

If you think marijuana should remain illegal, then repeat after me:
"America should take more than 40 percent of its adults, and 50
percent of its high school students by the time they reach
graduation, and put them in prison. They all deserve criminal records."

Seriously, that's a conservative statistic of how many Americans have
violated marijuana laws. Generally via smoking it. Often more than
once. Most of us turned out fine.

If full enforcement of a law requires arresting and prosecuting
nearly half of a country's 300 million people, does this suggest
something inherently wrong with the law? Or does it instead argue for
the selective enforcement we have now, where poor and dark-skinned
offenders become "drug felons" while their paler and wealthier
cousins largely escape police notice?

Now a practical question. If a decriminalization bill passes the
legislature, will Rell sign or veto it? In 2007 she vetoed medical
marijuana, which is why Connecticut still prosecutes and imprisons
sick people for treating themselves with the "wrong" medicine.

But these prosecutions happened before the economy entered meltdown
mode. The threat of statewide financial collapse might change Jodi
Rell's mind where simple human compassion did not.