LEGALIZE THE MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION DISCUSSION

It's time to take a good, hard look at marijuana prohibition.

Despite society's most assiduous efforts over nearly a century to
extirpate marijuana, and the consumption of untold billions of the
taxpayers' dollars to wage a war against it, marijuana is ubiquitous
in our culture, and ineradicable from it. That's not a 900-pound
gorilla in the corner; it's a naked emperor.

So what do we do?

We can ignore the economic crisis and keep throwing good money after
bad, passing this war along to the next generation to wage and pay
for, or we can look for a better way to curb drug abuse, protect the
public health and safety and eliminate the crime and violence
associated with illicit trafficking. And, while we're at it, we can
save a lot of money currently being squandered in the earnest but
futile attempt to eradicate marijuana from our culture, and, oh, by
the way, raise copious amounts of new revenue. Rough estimates
suggest that the prospective revenue is at least what casinos are
expected to produce, without the need to destroy any forests and pave
them into parking lots.

Whether marijuana is a good thing or a bad thing is irrelevant to
this discussion. Even if it were as dangerous as its worst critics
allege, that would not alter the facts of its ubiquity and
indelibility. The exaggerated claims of marijuana's harm only raise
the questions of why the sky isn't falling and why the bodies aren't piling up.

The question in 2009 is whether we keep the prohibition laws in
place, or repeal them, replacing them with a system of regulation and
taxation, with controls over cultivation, purity, distribution and
sales, and age limits on purchases.

There's a big problem with that suggestion, however, and it's not
that it's a radical idea. Privately, people readily agree that we
shouldn't be arresting people for pot - growing it, selling it or
using it - and ought to be looking seriously at the revenue
potential. The problem is they say it only in private, fearful that
speaking up in public about the wrongheadedness of the marijuana laws
would put their job, security clearance or custody of their children
in serious jeopardy. It's a simple matter of priorities, and they
have theirs right.

The immediate struggle is not to legalize marijuana, but to legalize
discussion about it.

Rhode Island has made an extraordinary beginning. By a formal
resolution adopted this past July, the Rhode Island Senate set up a
commission to make a thorough study and issue a full report on the
efficacy of marijuana prohibition. The commission is charged with,
among other tasks, evaluating whether prohibition has kept marijuana
from the reach of children, whether the illicit earnings from
marijuana fund organized crime or drug cartels and whether
prohibition begets crime and violence instead of preventing it. The
commission is also to look at the revenue potential of a regulated,
taxed system of cultivation, distribution and sale. Watch for the
report of their findings and recommendations in late January 2010.

In California, three legalization initiatives are working their way
to the 2010 ballot, and a regulate-and-tax bill is pending in the
state Legislature. Nobody is snickering, not least the governor, who
has urged serious consideration of this approach. A similar bill,
called "An Act to Regulate and Tax the Cannabis Industry," will be
considered by the Revenue Committee in the Massachusetts Legislature
on Wednesday of this week.

Marijuana's detractors are fond of pointing out how marijuana has
changed over the years, increasing in potency. I don't know about
that, but I do know that the marijuana issue has certainly changed.
For generations, marijuana law reform advocates have pointed to the
injustice of prohibition. Now they are also pointing to the
obsolescence and inaffordability of prohibition.

Marijuana is here to stay. Let's get serious, and get real, about it.

Richard M. Evans is an attorney in Northampton, Mass. To reach him,
and for more information on the proposal to regulate and tax
marijuana, go to www.cantaxreg.com.