SOME POTENT ARGUMENTS FOR LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

As Maryland weighs legalizing medical marijuana, it should consider
my experience when I visited the student lounge at Montgomery
College's Rockville campus at lunchtime last week and began
interviewing randomly selected students about their views on weed.

Among the first group I approached, one of the four young men
volunteered within minutes that he not only smoked marijuana but also
sold it. He told me his price list: $10 a gram for "middies," the
least potent and most readily available variety; $20 a gram for
"headies" with more THC; $35 for the strongest, "exotic" types, like
"white widow."

The youth's matter-of-fact attitude highlights a reality that's under
our nose but is often overlooked in the oh-so-earnest debates over
drug policy. When it comes to marijuana, American society has lost
the war on drugs--and that's okay. We should stop squandering time
and money trying to reverse history and instead legalize both medical
and recreational use of this mild narcotic widely seen as no more
harmful than alcohol.

Here are some facts:

Pot is widely available. A sizable chunk of the population thinks
that's not a problem. In many locales, including Montgomery,
prosecutors routinely send offenders caught with small quantities to
a few days or weeks of drug education rather than prison. California
and 12 other states will let you buy marijuana for health reasons,
such as to control vomiting or relieve glaucoma. Four of those states
permit collectives in which members grow their own.

In our region, advocates in Maryland and the District are pushing to
legalize medical cannabis. (Virginia is sitting it out for now.)
Maryland's policy recently attracted attention when a little-noticed
2003 law, which sets a maximum fine of $100 for medical use, was
applied in two separate cases Aug. 27 in Rockville. Otherwise the
penalty for pot possession in Maryland is up to one year in prison
and a $1,000 fine.

My campus interviews indicate that the younger generation
overwhelmingly favors legalizing cannabis. Fifteen of 20 students
said they supported it, and the opponents acknowledged that they were
in a small minority.

This, mind you, is the generation raised since the onset of
well-financed, high-profile, anti-drug education campaigns, such as DARE.

Students offered numerous thoughtful reasons for legalization. The
most frequent, by far, was the common-sense point that current laws
aren't working. "For most people my age, it's a popular thing. People
are going to do it anyway," said Simone Brewer, 17, a freshman from Rockville.

Several also argued that the economy would benefit. The government
should tax marijuana and save the money now spent on prosecuting and
imprisoning users, they said. "People are doing it every day, but the
government isn't making money off of it," said Billy Vivian, 19, of
Wheaton, who is studying criminal justice. "The prisons wouldn't be
so filled up with nonviolent offenders."

All the students who supported legalization also favored keeping laws
against such stronger drugs as cocaine, ecstasy, heroin and
methamphetamines. They said those can cause severe mental and health
problems or even kill you. They said legal marijuana should be
subject to restrictions similar to those on alcohol, with strict
prohibitions against underage use and driving while high.

Many of the students said they thought alcohol is more harmful than
pot. It is more dangerous to drive drunk than stoned, they thought,
and pot makes people mellow while alcohol makes them belligerent.

"When's the last time you heard about some guy on marijuana coming in
and hitting his wife?" Anthony Thompson, 18, of Silver Spring, said.

In my view, there's one strong reason for keeping marijuana illegal.
The risk of getting caught discourages some people from trying it or
using it regularly. That's a plus for public health. But that's
outweighed by the social and economic benefits of legalization.

Moreover, the current policy leads people to be cynical about the
law. "If you have laws that are not effectively enforced, or are
flouted as openly as some of these are, I think it undermines public
confidence," said a senior Maryland law enforcement official who
spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be candid about a
controversial subject.

Some of the young people who support legalization now will doubtless
change their minds as they get older, especially when they start to
worry that their own children will smoke as they -- or their friends
- -- did. Given the other trends, though, there's a good chance that
the rising generation will change the laws when it comes to power. We
should change them now. It would save millions of dollars and
countless hours of police officers' time and eliminate a source of
hypocrisy about what we as a society actually tolerate.

Maybe She Does Walk on Water

The good news keeps coming for D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
After city schools opened without major disruptions, the system
reported that enrollment was close to surpassing that of the previous
year. If the number is confirmed in early 2010 after an audit, it
would be a vote of confidence from parents. It also would embarrass
Rhee's detractors on the D.C. Council, who were skeptical when she
predicted that enrollment would be so high. On Friday, we learned
that she's moved closer to a contract with the union. Let's just hope
that there aren't too many mysterious erasures on the next round of
standardized tests.