A NEW CONVERSATION ON DRUG PROHIBITION

A year ago, a drug policy activist I was interviewing turned the
tables on me. "What do you think it would take to get Americans to
start talking seriously about legalizing pot?" he asked.

I said maybe if some high profile celebrity got caught smoking
marijuana, someone you never would have suspected - preferably a
Republican. Catch Nancy Reagan with a joint, I said, and the national
conversation about drug prohibition would change.

Michael Phelps is no Nancy Reagan. But the conversation seemed to
shift a little when photos surfaced of him hitting on a bong at a
party on a South Carolina campus in February. There was the usual faux
outrage to begin with, with commentators clucking about role models
and talk of Phelps' endorsement contracts going up in smoke. There
were the usual hippie-dippy jokes, with dated Cheech-and-Chong
references. Phelps made the ritual apologies and promised never to do
it again.

But then there was a bit of a backlash. People started saying things
out loud that might have been whispered a decade ago, like "what's the
big deal? A 23-year-old kid smoked pot at a frat house. What else is
new?" The sheriff who launched a big-deal investigation of the
incident found himself ridiculed on the editorial pages of South
Carolina newspapers.

Phelps didn't change the conversation, but he reflected the way it is
changing. So did the message sent last November by Massachusetts
voters, who, without having been pushed by an expensive campaign,
voted two-to-one to decriminalize marijuana.

America's drug policy has been frozen in place for 35 years by culture
war politics born of the '60s. But if you listen hard, you can hear
the ice breaking up.

Consider the Rockefeller Drug Laws, enacted in 1973 when the "war on
drugs" was still young. Mandatory minimum sentences - as high as 15
years to life - were set for possessing even small quantities of
drugs. New prisons were built and filled, with thousands of
non-violent drug users and small-time dealers. Other states followed
suit, committing America to treating addiction and recreational drug
use as a law enforcement problem, not a public health problem.

So now, with 5 percent of the world's population, we have 25 percent
of the world's prisoners: 2.3 million behind bars, with more than 5
million more on probation or parole. Our incarceration rate is nearly
five times the average worldwide.

"Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing
something different - and vastly counterproductive," Sen. Jim Webb,
D-Va., wrote last week in Parade magazine. "Obviously, the answer is
the latter."

What's been missing all these years in our conversation about drugs
are reputable voices pointing out the obvious: All this incarceration
has done nothing to reduce the use or availability of drugs.

Webb isn't the only one daring to speak the truth. New York Gov. David
Paterson delivered the message to legislators in his
state-of-the-state message: "I can't think of a criminal justice
strategy that has been more unsuccessful than the Rockefeller Drug
Laws."

And this week, Paterson delivered change, reaching a deal with
legislative leaders to replace Nelson Rockefeller's drug war legacy
with new laws that will give judges more discretion, let some addicts
choose treatment over incarceration, and give current inmates a chance
to have their sentences reduced.

We're seeing change at the top as well. Attorney General Eric Holder
announced last week he is reversing the Bush administration's practice
of prosecuting in federal courts medical marijuana distributors whose
operations are legal under state law in California and other
jurisdictions.

President Barack Obama has appointed a "drug czar" who told a Senate
committee last week that prevention and treatment are as important as
law enforcement. As Seattle police chief, Gil Kerlikowske implemented
a policy set by voters in a referendum requiring police to make
marijuana enforcement their lowest priority, earning praise from drug
reform advocates.

Drug wars are still being fought, in Afghanistan, where most of the
world's heroin originates, and in Mexico, where a government crackdown
on drug cartels has sparked an orgy of violence.

But even these conflicts argue for reform rather than escalation.
Visiting Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conceded that U.S.
demand is in part responsible for Mexico's drug war - but she didn't
call for longer prison sentences or other failed "war on drugs"
prescriptions.

Instead, Americans are facing facts like these: An estimated 62
percent of the drug cartels' profits come from selling marijuana in
the United States. Americans spent $9 billion a year on Mexican pot,
the White House drug office estimates, and another $36 billion on
domestic weed.

And, Webb notes, more than 47 percent of all U.S. drug arrests in 2007
were for marijuana offenses. That's a lot of money spent buying and
policing a drug that, by most any measure, is less dangerous than beer.

With the economy on the skids and all levels of government struggling
to keep their heads above water, there is a newly urgent focus on the
money spent on police and prisons. Webb is introducing legislation,
with bipartisan support, to create a national commission to re-examine
the criminal justice system "from top to bottom."

There's even serious talk of legalization. A California lawmaker has
introduced a bill that would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. A
10 percent tax on pot would generate $1.4 billion for California,
Time's Joe Klein writes.

A similar bill has been filed in Massachusetts. It would legalize and
tax commercial distribution of marijuana - $150 an ounce for the
lowest grade weed, rising to $250 for top quality. Richard Evans, one
of the authors of the bill, estimates it could bring $100 million a
year to the state treasury.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Massachusetts Legislature to
show leadership on drug policy, but if the times they are a-changing,
even Beacon Hill may eventually notice.

The House sponsor of the bill, Rep. Ellen Story, D-Amherst, doesn't
expect it to pass soon, but told the Daily Collegian she's happy to
help start the discussion.

"The older generation, for the most part, were the ones who had such
trouble with same sex marriage, and the younger generation will come
along and find it astonishing that that was ever a controversial
issue," she said, "so the same thing may happen with marijuana."

Evans told me "decades of whispered grumblings about the wisdom and
efficacy of prohibition are rapidly giving way to a really serious
public discussion about how to replace it."

The discussion may feel new, he said, but America has been here
before. In a time of similar economic strife 75 years ago, the nation
left behind a culture wars issue that had dominated politics for a
half-century. Prohibition had turned ordinary people into criminals,
filled the prisons, turned the streets over to armed gangs - and done
nothing to make the nation more virtuous.

Under the leadership of a new president, Prohibition was repealed.
History may not quite be ready to repeat itself, but people are
talking about it, more seriously than ever.

Rick Holmes, opinion editor of the MetroWest Daily News.