MARIJUANA PROHIBITIONISTS ARE JUST BLOWING SMOKE

The amazing thing about marijuana is its ability to addle the brains
of people who don't smoke it.

Saying so may not be the most diplomatic way to begin the debate Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger just called for on legalizing marijuana. But
then I've lost faith in that debate.

For years, my annual Red Ribbon Week rite was to point out - by
marshalling responsible studies, science and common sense - that the
war on marijuana has failed at a staggering cost.

Marijuana prohibitionists don't care. There is something blocking
their ability to process opposing viewpoints. They are not in a
debate, though they'll go through the motions if you engage them.

Then they'll summarily reject the best science in the universe, which
says unequivocally marijuana is safe, even medically beneficial.
Facts don't count, somehow.

Neither does policy failure. If it did, I'd mention 85 percent of
high school seniors surveyed said marijuana is "easy to get."

Waste of time, such data. Blowing billions remains important to
marijuana prohibitionists. They are as dissuaded by failure as they
are dismissive of fact.

There must be a reason.

In 2005, I found a Nixon-era study that illuminated some of it.

"Many see the drug as fostering a counterculture, which conflicts
with basic moral precepts as well as with the operating functions of
our society," the report said.

In other words, rational drug policy is an afterthought; pot is a
skirmish in the culture war. To defeat it is to defeat the
counterculture. Liberalism. Whatever.

Pointing out the soaring hypocrisy of self-styled Grover Norquists
who decry big government ("Leave us alone") then deny Americans
freedom of choice would just be more of the feckless logic so utterly
wasted on marijuana prohibitionists.

Of course, there's a religious component to some conservatism.
Meaning some marijuana morality is faith-based. How do you argue with that?

Perhaps by remembering Carrie Nation, the temperance champion, "a
bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like."

Nation and her supporters failed to anticipate the unintended
consequences of Prohibition, the rise of a Tommy-gun-toting criminal
class that outweighed any evils of alcohol.

Today, however, marijuana prohibitionists can see the ills they have
wrought - the rise of narco-states, sinister cartels, the
militarization of American police, the corruption, the erosion of
civil liberties, the racist, expanding prison gulag - foisted on
Stockton, in particular - but they don't care.

Again, why? Psychologists cite social dominance orientation, a
mind-set that favors right-wing authoritarianism. Its adherents
prefer structure and black-and-white clarity.

Such folks support police powers. Civil liberties are for pinkos like
the ACLU. They like hierarchy, too, and if a drug regime relegates
minorities to lower social positions, so be it. The dominant class is
the safer class.

Ironically, their obsession with order guarantees police are
distracted by a goose chase.

"A considerable amount of our resources go into combating marijuana,"
said Stockton police spokesman Pete Smith. Meanwhile, somebody's
carrying off your stereo.

I'm not ascribing this fraught mind-set to all supporters of
marijuana prohibition. There are thoughtful opponents, too.

But I have come to see the fact-averse, authoritarian types
perpetuating the status quo, even profiting from it, as a bigger
problem than pot.

For them, a Pyrrhic victory over the '60s, however destructive, is
preferable to a pluralistic country in which people live by values
anathema to them.

Don't doubt their anti-democratic tendencies. California's 74,000
marijuana arrests in 2007 represent an 18 percent increase - this, in
a state that voted to decriminalize marijuana.

What happened to the will of the majority? They did. All to combat a
substance no more dangerous than a chocolate Easter bunny.

Take marijuana policy out of the hands of prohibitionists. If the
resulting society makes them more anxious, well, I can recommend an
herbal antidepressant and relaxant. It'll mellow them right out.