WEED IS WINNING

Why I and Most Californians Think Pot Should Be Legalized

In the war on drugs, weed is winning.

I like that line. I stole it fair and square from Jim Hightower, the
tough-talking Texan whose commentaries can be heard on KZFR. He used
it in a piece he wrote recently for the online journal Alternet about
the failure of the drug war. I think he's right about marijuana, the
subject of our special issue this week.

For one thing, polls indicate that more and more people--nearly a
majority nationwide, more than a majority in California--believe
going after marijuana tokers is a waste of time and money and that
pot should be legalized.

I'm one of them. It's not that I'm a fan of marijuana, mind you. Like
President Obama, I used to smoke it, but I quit the stuff years ago
and now don't recommend it to anyone. Every drug, however mellow,
produces a hangover of some kind and, at worst, addiction or
dependence, so why get started?

If there's one thing I've learned over the years, despite my
pigheadedness, it's that chasing after pleasure and fleeing
unpleasantness does not create a peaceful life. Better to take things
as they come and make the most of them.

Still, as Hightower writes, the war on weed is far worse than weed
itself--in the number of police agents it diverts from solving
serious crimes, in the $10 billion we spend annually on catching,
prosecuting and incarcerating marijuana users and sellers, and in the
fact that some 41,000 Americans are in federal or state prisons on
marijuana charges.

Think, too, of the illegal car searches, phone taps and door-busting
night raids that trample on the Bill of Rights, and the fact that
people who are merely suspected of marijuana violations have had
their money, cars and other property confiscated by police.

Then remember that 89 percent of all marijuana arrests are for simple
possession.

The irony is that by criminalizing marijuana the government has made
it more expensive and thus more profitable to grow and distribute,
giving rise to the black market and such phenomena as Mexican cartels
farming pot in the Sierra and the deadly cartel battles along the
Mexican border.

After 40 years of the war on drugs, you'd think that illicit-drug use
would be down, but of course it's not. In a 2005 survey, 85 percent
of high-school seniors said pot was "easy to get"--even easier than
alcohol, since no ID is needed.

So, if the drug war has been such a failure, why not change course?
It's simple: money and jobs. For every person in a state prison,
seven people--cops, judges, parole officers, etc.--are employed to
put him there, keep him there, or monitor him when he gets out. Drug
users and dealers are the raw material of the prison-industrial
complex. Without them it would diminish in size, power and wealth.

Of course, if it did diminish we'd have a whole lot more money to
spend on health care, social services and education, including
education about drugs and their effects. In the long run that would
do more to keep kids off pot than all the police in the world.