ANTIDOTE TO DRUG WAR MADNESS

So I was making dinner, and on NPR I hear, to my amazement, a report
by Robert Siegel and Michele Norris marking April 20 as Marijuana
Observance Day. "We're hearing more talk about legalizing marijuana,"
noted Norris, "and not just from those who are lighting up."

I, myself, lit up-metaphorically-over this. Aside from the fact that
this is a policy change that's at least 30 years overdue, the story
aired at the same time we were cringing over the long-suspected yet
nonetheless horrific accounts of torture under the Bush regime. Once
again, the right wing of the Republican Party comes off as addicted to
all forms of cruelty, just as it did when it sanctioned "extreme
rendition." But maybe if right-wing Republicans all smoked a little
pot-the gateway drug to mellowness-the world would be a better place.
Just a thought.

As many critics and commentators-and not just on the left-have noted,
repeatedly, the so-called "War on Drugs" is one of the single most
ineffectual, expensive, dangerous, dumb-ass activities our government
engages in, especially the part focused on marijuana. Let's hear that
radical socialist William F. Buckley on the subject in 2004, in what
he calls an "exercise in scrupulosity": "There are approximately
700,000 marijuana-related arrests made very year. Most of these-87
percent-involve nothing more than mere possession of small amounts of
marijuana.Professor Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy
Alliance.estimates at 100,000 the number of Americans currently behind
bars for one or another marijuana offense."

Buckley's conclusion? Legalize it. Glenn Beck has jumped on the
bandwagon. So has Ron Paul, who called the war on drugs "a total disaster."

President Obama recently received multiple questions at a town hall
meeting asking if marijuana shouldn't be legalized to help the
economy, and Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the federal
government, unlike under Bush, would no longer raid medical marijuana
dispensaries.

In the wake of this, John Burnett and Carl Kasell on NPR imagined a
country in which pot had been legalized for two years. They cited
Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist and expert on the economics of the
marijuana market. What might the economic benefits of legalizing pot
be? While not earth-shattering when compared to, say, never having
invaded Iraq, from a benefit-cost analysis alone, legalization makes
sense.

"Miron figures state and federal taxes on cannabis sales adds up to
$6.7 billion annually," Burnett reported. "And he calculates the
savings from not having to enforce state and federal marijuana laws,
in arrests, prosecution and incarceration, at $12.9 billion a year.
Excluding additional expenses, such as the public health cost of
marijuana, or the cost of administering the new law, Miron figures
that legal pot creates almost a $20 billion bonus."

This idea seems everywhere in the air this spring. Bruce Mirken, a
spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, notes that government
surveys indicate about 15 million Americans admit to having smoked pot
in the previous month. California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano projected
that marijuana is a $14 billion dollar industry in his state alone,
which if taxed, could bring in $1.3 billion in revenues. So he
introduced a bill to legalize it. D.L. Hughley did a piece on
legalization on his CNN show. The Wall Street Journal (!) featured an
editorial titled "The War on Drugs is a Failure" by three former Latin
American presidents who proposed decriminalization of pot for personal
use.

Some of the new focus on this issue stems, of course, from the soaring
drug-and-gun violence on the Mexican border. It is estimated that in
the last year alone, more than 5,000 people in Mexico have died in
drug-related violence. Some of the impetus is economic. Some is
humanitarian: Since 1970, the government has arrested a staggering 38
million people for nonviolent drug offenses, and the percentage of
such offenders in our prison-industrial complex has soared 2,557
percent during this time. Currently, nearly half a million people are
in jail on drug charges. There were more arrests for drug violations
than for any other offense in 2007. It is the war on drugs that makes
the United States the world's largest jailer.

Of course, it is politically impossible for the first African-American
president to legalize pot, isn't it? And he obviously has other
crucial issues to tackle. But if Republicans, many of whom might
benefit from passing the bong, followed the lead of Buckley, Beck and
Paul, this extravagant waste of human and financial resources could
end.