FIVE MYTHS ABOUT HIGH TIMES IN AMERICA

As the U.S. takes a fresh look at its twisted relationship with drugs,
it should be drawing on its centuries worth of experience on the issue

Americans have historical amnesia of a general variety, but the
blackout is particularly acute when it comes to what our grandparents,
and their grandparents, did to get high. Forty years after Woodstock,
the nation is taking a fresh look at its twisted relationship with
drugs and insobriety. But we're doing so without drawing lessons from
the centuries of experience we have with inebriation and the effort to
control it. Five myths must be dispensed with if America ever plans on
making rational drug policy.

1. America's drug problem began in the late 1960s.

Drugs (other than booze) first went mainstream in the early to
mid-19th century. The father of the opium boom -- or, more accurately,
the mother -- was the temperance movement. Pressured by the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, religious leaders
and other advocates, Americans put down the bottle, and drinking
plummeted by a half to three-quarters.

They got high instead. In 1872, the Massachusetts State Board of
Health noted that "between 1840 and 1850, soon after teetotalism had
become a fixed fact ... our own importations of opium swelled." When
opium started causing problems, in came morphine, marketed as a
non-addictive alternative. When that proved patently false, Bayer's
heroin was sold as a non-addictive substitute for morphine. Sears,
Roebuck and Co. was slinging cocaine kits, complete with powder and
syringe.

2. President Nixon is to blame for the war on drugs.

Nixon's declaration was nothing new. Americans have been waging war
against their love of inebriation since before they were Americans. In
1619, Virginia got it going by banning "playing dice, cards,
drunkenness, idleness, and excess in apparel."

Temperance movements, led by women, left men unsure that they wanted
to share the franchise. "I am not sure how I will vote, but think I
will vote against suffrage," Sen. Warren Harding of Ohio said in 1916.
"I don't see how I can vote for suffrage and against prohibition." He
voted for prohibition and, as president during the dry spell, held
regular whisky and poker nights.

3. Legalization will increase teen drug use.

But the children! Californians fretted loudly in 1996 that the state's
new medical marijuana law would lead to an increase in teen
pot-smoking, so the state studied it closely. A decade later, teen use
had collapsed. Among seventh- and 11th-graders, the number of kids
saying they'd smoked in the last month fell by a quarter; among
ninth-graders, it fell by 47 per cent. Bigger declines were found in
weekly and annual use. In almost every other state that passed a
medical marijuana law, pot-smoking among children declined faster than
in states that didn't.

4. In foreign countries, legalization has been disastrous.

First, no country has ever completely legalized drugs, not since
global treaties were signed a century ago ushering in prohibition. In
Holland, drug laws are still on the books, but a social pact between
the government and the people keeps shops from getting busted.

In 2001, Portugal became the first European country to abolish drug
laws when it repealed criminal penalties for pot, cocaine, heroin and
methamphetamine. The United Nations suggested the new law could be a
treaty violation and would lead to crime, a spike in addiction and a
rise in "drug tourism." But the country didn't fully legalize. People
caught with drugs still had to go to a magistrate and face a small
penalty. But they wouldn't go to jail.

Now the United Nations is lauding Portugal. In its most recent World
Drug Report, it says, "These conditions keep drugs out of the hands of
those who would avoid them under a system of full prohibition, while
encouraging treatment, rather than incarceration, for users." The
report also noted that the policy had not led to an increase in drug
tourism and that "a number of drug-related problems have decreased."

5. Americans aren't ready for legalization.

While pot-smoking peaked in the late '70s, legalization never came
close to being a majority position. This country has fewer pot smokers
today -- a University of Michigan study found that marijuana use among
18- to 20-year-olds dropped by nearly half from the late '70s to today
- -- but polls show support at about 50 per cent for taxing and
regulating marijuana as we do alcohol.

But Americans have a dim view of their neighbours' enlightenment,
which shines through in research by Zogby in Rhode Island and Vermont.
The survey, paid for by the Marijuana Policy Project (my onetime
employer), interviewed 501 likely voters in Rhode Island and 502 in
Vermont. It found 69- and 71-per-cent support for medical marijuana,
respectively. No surprise. But Zogby asked one last question:
Regardless of your own opinion, do you think a majority in your state
support or oppose medical marijuana? In Vermont, 38 per cent of people
thought a majority backed it; a quarter of Rhode Islanders guessed
their fellow citizens supported medical pot.

Americans are ready. They just don't know it yet.