ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDICAL 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 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 was then developed
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 there are about 600 dispensaries in the city. If
so, they outnumber the Starbucks stores there.

The councilman wants to close dispensaries whose intent is profit
rather than "compassionate" distribution 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 attempting to use high taxes to keep marijuana prices
artificially high would leave a large 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. 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.