A SENSIBLE HALFWAY STOP TO DECRIMINALIZING DRUGS?

The criminal factor is being lifted from marijuana use in California.
The other 12 states where marijuana is permitted for medical use can't
be far behind. And if 13 states now, then all 50 in the next years?
That's the future some see flowing from a decision announced Feb. 25
by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. The federal Drug Enforcement
Agency, Holder announced, would stop its raids on marijuana
dispensaries in states where marijuana is legal for medicinal purposes.

The order spells a refreshing respect for states' rights. In
California, where hundreds of new dispensaries are springing up to
meet demand, customers need only produce a physician's recommendation
in order to buy marijuana.

California law allows pot to be dispensed for "any illness for which
marijuana provides a relief." Back pain, anxiety, sleeplessness,
glaucoma - virtually any condition can now be claimed.

Perhaps no line can be drawn between serious conditions for which
marijuana is a godsend, relieving many patients suffering excruciating
pain, and simple recreational use.

And then there's the sheer numbers issue. Surveys show 100 million
Americans at some point in their lives have smoked pot.

It's time to ask: What's government doing prohibiting marijuana in the
first place?

In California alone, the marijuana market is already estimated to
total $14 billion a year. Legislation pending in Sacramento would
regulate the trade and yield the state $1.3 billion in revenues.

In an America whose revenue-hungry state governments have already gone
hog-wild legalizing another practice once thought evil - gambling -
what's so different about marijuana?

And there's a parallel. At the height of the Great Depression, state
governments drowning in red ink seized the opportunity to repeal
prohibition of alcohol as a way to institute legal taxes and fill
their empty coffers.

The myth we need to break is that the use of mind-altering drugs is
really different from a whole range of activities - sometimes sheer
fun, sometimes dangerous - that humans have engaged in since the dawn
of time.

I'd put gambling on that list, but even more deeply entrenched are
alcohol, drugs and sexual practices. All have legitimate roles; each,
depending on its form and application, can be seriously abused. A
mature society warns of problems but holds back on prohibition - and
sensibly, because rules of total denial will be broken anyway.

What's missing on the marijuana front, suggests Eric Sterling,
president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, is any fair, open
debate about its use. How serious is it, for example, if a high school
student gets "stoned"? Is "binge drinking" really less serious? Would
a successful prevention model aim mostly at abstinence or some safer,
moderate form of use?

We've been so preoccupied with a total prohibition model for drugs,
says Sterling, that we've not had the sane conversation we need.

Hopefully, California and the other medical-marijuana states will now
oblige us to open up a fuller debate.

By good fortune, a fascinating new European study has become available
to us. In the late 1990s, Portugal was faced by seemingly runaway drug
usage, together with record arrest levels and imprisonments. (Sound
familiar?)

So the Portuguese government decided to create a high-level
commission, dominated by health care professionals, to recommend a
solution. The commission's surprise recommendation: Don't officially
legalize all drugs. Instead, decriminalize them - take away all
criminal penalties.

"I think it's bizarrely underappreciated what's been done in
Portugal," says analyst Glenn Greenwald, author of a just-published
study on the Portuguese experiment for the Cato Institute, a
Washington think tank.

The Portuguese parliament didn't "go soft" on drug traffickers -
they're still liable to arrest and criminal prosecution. Police can
still issue citations to drug users. But under the new law, in effect
since 2001, the worst fate an apprehended drug user can expect is
mandatory appearance before a "dissuasion commission" - which in turn
is most likely to suggest a course of treatment.

The crucial advantage of decriminalization, says Greenwald, is that it
removes citizens' fear of government punishment. So they feel free to
seek out help for treatment or stopping drug use altogether.

The money formerly spent on "putting drug users into cages," as he
puts it, is going for counselors and psychologists conducting quality
treatment programs.

America's "drug war" myth has been that anything short of severe
criminal penalties leads to massive drug abuse, escalating crime and
worse.

But in Portugal, none of the predicted parade of horrors has occurred.
Drug use among youth has actually declined, and surveys show use of
marijuana, cocaine and dangerous substances like heroin are all well
below Europe-wide averages.

Decriminalization rather than legalization - could this be the sane
middle ground we need here too?