DROP 'MEDICAL' FROM MEDICAL POT LAWS

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 persons 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
as then wdeveloped to regulate who could buy -- or grow -- it.
(Caregivers? For how many patients? And in what quantities, and for
what "medical uses.")

Today, 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 persons with doctors'
"prescriptions."

Fifty-six percent of Californians support legalization, and Roger
Parloff reports ("How Marijuana Became Legal" in the Sept. 28 Fortune)
that they essentially have this. He notes that many California
"patients" arrive at dispensaries "on bicycles, roller skates or
skateboards." A Los Angeles city councilman estimates that there are
about 600 dispensaries in the city. If so, they outnumber the
Starbucks stores there period.

The councilman wants to close dispensaries whose intent is profit
rather than "compassionate" dis

tribution of medicine. Good luck with that:

Privacy considerations will shield doctors from investigations of
their lucrative 15-minute transactions with "patients."

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.

States trying to use high taxes to keep marijuana prices artificially
high would leave a big market for much cheaper illegal -- unregulated
and untaxed -- marijuana. So, revenues (and law enforcement savings)
would depend on the price falling close to the cost of production.

In the 1990s, a mere $2 per pack difference between U.S. and Canadian
cigarette prices created such a smuggling problem that Canada repealed
a cigarette tax increase.

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.

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.