LEGALIZE, TAX MARIJUANA, RESEARCHERS TELL U.N. DRUG COMMISSION

VIENNA -- A group of drug researchers is urging diplomats at a United
Nations meeting to drop their prohibition on cannabis and allow the
psychoactive substance to be sold and taxed like tobacco.

"Our message to politicians is that 'you don't have to worry too much
about the effects of cannabis and that the kids aren't listening to
you in any case,' " Peter Room, a public health professor at the
University of Melbourne, said today at a briefing. He helped chair a
scientific committee that produced a report saying that marijuana
isn't a public health menace and that half the U.S. population born
after 1970 and at least 21 years old has tried the drug.

The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs is meeting for a
second day in the Austrian capital. More than 1,400 diplomats and
policy makers from 130 countries are attending.

Proponents of legalization have gained some support. In California and
Hawaii medicinal marijuana is legal. Brazil's former President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso has supported the Beckley Foundation's
proposal to treat marijuana like tobacco. Billionaire investor George
Soros has funded programs that look for alternatives to
prohibition.

Antonia Maria Costa, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
director, yesterday called proposals to legalize drugs an
"oversimplification" of a problem that has caused "very considerable
damage in the last few years and decades."

Room and Peter Reuter, a public policy researcher at the University of
Maryland, both said at today's briefing that governments aren't
prepared to make changes to existing policy.

Around 11 percent of Americans and 7 percent of European Union
citizens smoked marijuana in the last year, the UN's 2008 drug report
says.

"Cannabis has become the most widely used illicit drug worldwide," the
International Narcotics Control Board wrote Feb. 19 in a report. The
latest UN statistics show around 41,000 metric tons of marijuana is
grown in 172 countries.

Marijuana, produced from the cannabis plant, can be smoked or ingested
and is used -- illegally in the U.S. and many other countries -- for
recreation. Medically, the substance has been used to combat pain in
cancer patients and others, and to treat neurological disorders and
glaucoma.

The Beckley Foundation, a non-profit policy institute near Oxford
University, published Cannabis Policy: Moving Beyond the Stalemate for this
week's UN meeting in Vienna. The international scientific team that wrote
the 240-page report argued that marijuana should be treated similarly to
tobacco.

Cardoso, ex-Colombian President Cesar Gaviria and former Mexican
President Ernesto Zedillo wrote Feb. 23 in the Wall Street Journal
that policy based on eradication, interdiction and the criminalization
of consumers hasn't been effective, and that the violence and
organized crime linked to drug trafficking remain.

Soros has donated money to support ballot initiatives in Florida, Ohio
and other states to allow the medicinal use of marijuana. He supported
the Drug Policy Alliance Network, the Washington-based organization
that says it's seeking "alternatives to the drug war that are grounded
in science, compassion, health and human rights."