BE WARY OF ROCKY MOUNTAINS' HIGH

Denver -- Inside the green neon sign, which is shaped like a
marijuana leaf, is a red cross. The cross serves the fiction that
most transactions in the store -- which is what it really is --
involve medicine.

The U.S. Justice Department recently announced that federal laws
against marijuana would not be enforced for possession of marijuana
that conforms to states' laws. In 2000, Colorado legalized medical
marijuana. Since Justice's decision, the average age of the 400
people a day seeking "prescriptions" at Colorado's multiplying
medical marijuana dispensaries has fallen precipitously. Many new
customers are college students.

Customers -- this, not patients, is what most really are -- tell
doctors at the dispensaries that they suffer from insomnia, anxiety,
headaches, premenstrual syndrome, "chronic pain," whatever, and pay
nominal fees for "prescriptions." Most really just want to smoke
pot.

So says Colorado's attorney general, John Suthers, an honest and
thoughtful man trying to save his state from institutionalizing such
hypocrisy. His dilemma is becoming commonplace: 13 states have, and
15 more are considering, laws permitting medical use of marijuana.

Realizing they could not pass legalization of marijuana, some people
who favor that campaigned to amend Colorado's Constitution to
legalize sales for medicinal purposes. Marijuana has medical uses --
e.g., to control nausea caused by chemotherapy -- but the helpful
ingredients can be conveyed with other medicines.

Medical marijuana was legalized but, Suthers says, no serious regime
was then developed to regulate who could buy -- or grow -- it.

Colorado communities can use zoning to restrict dispensaries, or can
ban them because, even if federal policy regarding medical marijuana
is passivity, selling marijuana remains against federal law. But
Colorado's probable future has unfolded in California, which in 1996
legalized sales of marijuana to people with doctors'
"prescriptions."

Colorado's medical marijuana dispensaries have hired lobbyists to
seek taxation and regulation, for the same reason Nevada's brothel
industry wants to be taxed and regulated by the state: The Nevada
Brothel Association regards taxation as legitimation and insurance
against prohibition as the booming state's frontier mentality recedes.

State governments, misunderstanding markets and ravenous for
revenues, exaggerate the potential windfall from taxing legalized
marijuana. California thinks it might reap $1.4 billion. But Rosalie
Pacula, a RAND Corporation economist, estimates that prohibition
raises marijuana production costs at least 400 percent, so
legalization would cause prices to fall much more than the 50 percent
the $1.4 billion estimate assumes.

Furthermore, marijuana is a normal good in that demand for it varies
with price. Legalization, by drastically lowering price, will
increase marijuana's public health costs, including mental and
respiratory problems, and motor vehicle accidents.

Suthers has multiple drug-related worries. Colorado ranks sixth in
the nation in identity theft, two-thirds of which is driven by the
state's $1.4 billion annual methamphetamine addiction. He is loath to
see complete legalization of marijuana at a moment when new methods
of cultivation are producing plants in which the active ingredient,
THC, is "seven, eight times as concentrated" as it used to be.
Furthermore, he was pleasantly surprised when a survey of nonusing
young people revealed that health concerns did not explain nonuse.
The main explanation was the law: "We underestimate the number of
people who care that something is illegal."

But they will care less as law itself loses its dignity. By mocking
the idea of lawful behavior, legalization of medical marijuana may be
more socially destructive than full legalization.