FREEMAN OF SPEECH: PROHIBITION DIDN'T WORK ONCE, ISN'T WORKING NOW

Raise your hand if you remember Chicago in the early 1930s, at the
height of alcohol Prohibition.

The early '30s saw mafia warfare at its highest, featuring all-time
highs in black market profiteering and bootlegging what so many
enjoy on a nightly basis today.

Alcohol was prohibited by the 18th Amendment, but for the next 16
years, alcohol sales thrived underground while violence and murder
rates skyrocketed.

Prohibition was eventually repealed in 1933 by President Franklin
Roosevelt at the height of the Great Depression.

Yet today, the country faces another pandemic as a black market
incites violence caused by demand of an illegal product.

Today, Americans want to smoke marijuana.

Over 100 million people, including President Obama, have admitted to
smoking weed and another 25 million admit regular use over the past
year, according to The Washington Post. Moreover, in 2007, 62
percent of those who admitted first-time use of the drug were under age 18.

Marijuana is by far the most commonly used illicit drug in the U.S.,
yet the substance itself stands alone in comparison to legal drugs
like alcohol and tobacco.

In 2000, alcohol by itself, without counting drunk drivers, claimed
the lives of 85,000 people. Tobacco holds a rate six times higher,
killing 435,000 people, according to the Journal for the American
Medical Association.

Not a single person has ever died from a marijuana overdose, yet
775,137 people were arrested for simple possession in 2007.

The momentum from the 1980s in fighting our "War on Drugs" has taken
a different turn, as more and more citizens plead with lawmakers to
produce legislation to decriminalize, regulate and tax marijuana.

Chairman Betty Yee of the California State Board of Equalization
endorsed a bill in February to regulate the estimated $14 billion
marijuana market, citing a potential income for the state of $1.3
billion. The $14 billion figure came from eliminating expenses in
marijuana law enforcement and a taxation level comparable to alcohol
and tobacco.

The state currently collects $14 million from marijuana dispensaries
- - marijuana shops legal under state law - a figure that will grow
after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Feb. 26 the DEA
would no longer raid them.

In the medical community, scientists have produced repeated studies
about the benefits of marijuana, specifically for those who suffer
from glaucoma, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS and certain cancers, primarily
those who suffer from loss of appetite.

Marijuana legalization will not come easily. But leaders need to be
more honest about the nature of marijuana and what it does to people.

The truth changes from person to person.

"The problem is that it's difficult to tell what the effects of
marijuana will be for any given person at any time, because they
vary based on the person, their drug history, how much marijuana is
taken, and its potency," according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Obama recently addressed legalization in terms of stimulating the
economy at an online town hall meeting in the White House.

After pointing out the weed question was the No. 1 most asked
question in three different categories, including the economy, law
enforcement and health care, he belittled the online audience and
hypocritically dismissed legalization altogether.

If Obama was arrested for his weed use, he wouldn't be president.

Instead of lighting up a substantive debate over decriminalization,
regulation and taxation of marijuana, Obama ignored the plea of a
nation dealing with border violence, overflowing prisons, crippling
diseases and a stagnant economy.

Presumably he doesn't want to be remembered as "the weed president,"
but he shouldn't worry.

We don't remember FDR for legalizing Jell-O shots.

Eric Freeman, Jr. is a 22-year-old political science junior from New Orleans.