SMOKE SIGNALS

Most Americans seem content to let Olympic star Michael Phelps,
President Barack Obama and other high-profile folks off the hook for
smoking the whacky weed, whether it was last week or three decades ago.

Even that sheriff from South Carolina who wants to bust Phelps isn't
getting any support from other law enforcement officials in his
state. The standard response when publicly confronted with evidence
of pot smoking is "Sorry, I was/am young," accompanied by a sheepish
grin and an acknowledgment that millions of Americans can relate.

But while apologies for "youthful indiscretions" are piling up among
the "elite" of our society, the rank and file are putting in actual
jail time for the same behavior.

Drug Policy News reported that police made almost 830,000 arrests for
marijuana law offenses in the United States in 2007, of which 89
percent were for possession for personal use.

"Those arrested were separated from their families, branded
criminals, and in many cases fired from their jobs and denied school
loans and other public assistance," according to the 2008 report.
"The arrests cost taxpayers billions of dollars and consumed an
estimated 4.5 million law enforcement hours (that's the equivalent of
taking 112,500 law enforcement officers off the streets)."

It's time for some honesty about the country's failed war on drugs.
And it's time to take marijuana off the battlefields.

Filling our jails with marijuana users while rival drug gangs
continue to kill and maim those who get in their way, on our streets
and at the Mexican-American border, is too high a price to pay for
what most of America is happy to forgive and forget.

Al Capone ring a bell?

The state's prison population tripled between 1980 and 2001, from
7,731 in 1980 to 23,752. Of those, 24 percent of the inmates were
drug offenders. Some estimates are much higher.

Now, Gov. O'Malley wants to spend $23 million on two new
minimum-security prisons built for nonviolent drug offenders who have
more need of treatment than incarceration. The effect is still
punitive, and the intent reveals a blatant hypocrisy.

Maryland lawmakers grudgingly accepted that marijuana has a medical
benefit, but still allow medical marijuana users to be harassed,
arrested and charged. What a tragic contradiction. We can blame it
on determined drug warriors who want to paint this issue as good
versus evil, instead of seeking a common-sense approach.

Last week an editorial by this paper encouraged people to rat out
their neighbors for suspected drug activity. In the context of bad
laws, why? So we can continue to cram pot smokers into our
overcrowded jails to the tune of $35,000 annually per inmate?

On the national level, President Obama gave hope to those in favor of
reforming marijuana laws before he was elected, but chances are he
will not expend political capital on the issue anytime soon. Despite
the fact that the percentage of Americans favoring the legalization
of pot has risen more than 33 percent since 1995, and now stands at
its all-time highest level of public support, according to a 2005 Gallup poll.

Obama's own transition website, Change.gov, featured top questions
for the new administration. Questions related to amending drug laws,
specifically marijuana, were at the top of the list, yet politicos
seem uninterested in tackling the subject.

How long can these questions be ignored by lawmakers at all levels of
government? The time for reform is long overdue.