STRONG CASE CAN BE MADE FOR DECRIMINALIZING POT

I'm on the phone getting a recipe for hashish butter. Not from my
dealer but from Lester Grinspoon, a physician and emeritus professor
of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. And not for a party but for
my 9-year-old son, who has autism, anxiety and digestive problems, all
of which are helped by the analgesic and psychoactive properties of
marijuana. I wouldn't be giving it to my child if I didn't think it
was safe.

I came to marijuana while searching for a safer alternative to the
powerful antipsychotic drugs, such as Risperdal, that are typically
prescribed for children with autism and other behavioral disorders.
There have been few studies on the long-term effects of these drugs on
a growing child's brain, and in particular autism, a disorder whose
biochemical mechanisms are poorly understood.

But there is much documentation of the risks, which has caused the
Food and Drug Administration to require the highest-level "black box"
warnings of possible side effects that include permanent Parkinson's
disease-like tremors, metabolic disorders and death. A panel of
federal drug experts in 2008 urged physicians to use caution when
prescribing these medicines to children, as they are the most
susceptible to side effects.

We live in Rhode Island, one of more than a dozen states with medical
marijuana laws. That makes giving our son cannabis for a medical
condition legal. But we are limited in its use. We cannot take it on a
plane on a visit to his grandmother in Minnesota.

Even though we are not breaking the law, I still wonder what my
neighbors would think if they knew we were giving our son what most
people think of only as an illegal "recreational" drug.

Marijuana always has carried that illicit tang of danger -- "reefer
madness" and foreign drug cartels. But in 1988, Drug Enforcement
Administration Judge Francis L. Young, after two years of hearings,
deemed marijuana "one of the safest therapeutically active substances
known to man. ... In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than
many foods we commonly consume."

Beyond helping people like my son, the reasons to legalize cannabis on
a federal level are manifold. Anecdotal evidence from patients attests
to its pain-relieving properties, and the benefits in quelling
chemotherapy-induced nausea and wasting syndrome are well documented.
Future studies might find even more important medical uses.

Including marijuana in the war on drugs has proved foolhardy -- and
costly. By keeping marijuana illegal and prices high, illicit drug
money from the U.S. sustains the murderous narco-traffickers in Mexico
and elsewhere. In fact, after seeing how proximity to marijuana
growers affected the small Mexican village of Alamos, where my husband
spent much of his childhood, I was adamant about never entering into
that economy of violence.

Because Rhode Island has no California-like medical marijuana
dispensaries, patients must apply for a medical marijuana license and
find a way to procure cannabis. We floundered on our own until we
connected with a local horticultural graduate who agreed to provide
our son's organic marijuana. But given the seedy underbelly of the
illegal drug trade, combined with the current economic collapse, even
our grower has to be mindful of not exposing himself to robbery.

Legalizing marijuana not only removes the incentives for this
underground economy but would allow for regulation and taxation, just
like cigarettes and alcohol. The potential for abuse is there, as it
is with any substance, but toxicology studies have not even been able
to establish a lethal dose at typical-use levels.

Nor is it physically addicting, unlike your daily Starbucks, as anyone
who has suffered from a caffeine withdrawal headache can attest.

Although it has been demonized for years, marijuana hasn't been
illegal in the U.S. for that long. The cannabis plant became
criminalized on a federal level in 1937, largely because of the
efforts of one man, Harry Anslinger, commissioner of the then newly
formed Bureau of Narcotics, largely through sensationalistic stories
of murder and mayhem conducted supposedly under the influence of cannabis.

Cannabis was still listed in the U.S. Pharmacopeia, or USP, until 1941
as a household drug useful for treating headaches, depression,
menstrual cramps and toothaches, and drug companies worked to develop
a stronger strain.

In 1938, Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York, appointed a committee
to conduct the first in-depth study of marijuana's actual effects. It
found that, despite the government's fervent claims, marijuana did not
cause insanity or act as a gateway drug. It also found no scientific
reason for its criminalization. In 1972, President Richard Nixon's
Shafer Commission similarly concluded that cannabis should be
re-legalized.

Both recommendations were ignored, and since then billions of dollars
have been spent enforcing the ban. Public policy analyst Jon Gettman,
author of the 2007 report, "Lost Revenues and Other Costs of Marijuana
Laws," estimated marijuana-related annual costs of law enforcement at
$10.7 billion.

I was heartened to hear California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent
call for the U.S. to at least look at other nations' experiences with
legalizing marijuana -- and to open a debate. And given the real
security threats the nation faces, U.S. Attorney General Eric H.
Holder Jr.'s announcement that the federal government no longer would
conduct raids on legal medicinal marijuana dispensaries was a prudent
move.

Decriminalizing marijuana is the logical next step.