MEDICINE OFFERING A REAL ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH

INSIDE the green neon sign shaped like a marijuana leaf is a red
cross. It serves the fiction that most transactions in the Denver
store involve medicine.

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

Customers tell doctors at the dispensaries that they suffer with
insomnia, anxiety, headaches, premenstrual syndrome, "chronic pain"
or whatever and pay nominal fees for prescriptions.

Most just want to smoke pot, says Colorado's attorney general, John
Suthers, who is trying to save his state from institutionalizing
such hypocrisy. His dilemma is becoming commonplace: 13 states have
laws permitting medical use of marijuana, and 15 more are considering them.

Marijuana has medical uses, such as controlling nausea caused by
chemotherapy, but the helpful ingredients can be found in other
medicines. Medical marijuana was legalized in Colorado, but, Suthers
says, no serious regime was 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 is passivity, selling
marijuana remains against federal law. But Colorado's probable
future has unfolded in California, which in 1996 allowed sales
of marijuana to persons with doctors' prescriptions.

Fifty-six percent of Californians support legalization, and Roger
Parloff wrote recently in Fortune magazine that they essentially
have this. He noted that many customers arrive at dispensaries "on
bicycles, roller skates or skateboards." A Los Angeles city
councilman estimates there are about 600 dispensaries in the city,
which would outnumber Starbucks 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 lucrative 15-minute transactions with marijuana seekers.

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: The Nevada Brothel
Association regards taxation as legitimation and insurance against
prohibition as the state's frontier mentality recedes.

State governments, misunderstanding markets and ravenous for
revenues, exaggerate the potential windfall from taxing legal
marijuana. California thinks it might reap $1.4 billion. But Rosalie
Pacula, a RAND Corp. 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 normal 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 young
nonusers 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."

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