DECRIMINALIZING POT WOULD DEVASTATE CARTELS

One step forward: California voters will get a chance in November to
decide if the state should legalize marijuana. Two steps backward:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told authorities in Mexico
that the United States was looking at anything that worked to fight
the drug cartels killing Mexicans daily -- but responded "no" when
asked if anything included legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana.

The California vote, however it turns out, constitutes a recognition
that millions of Americans see lighting up a joint as no different
than sipping a martini. Clinton's rejection of easing U.S. law on
recreational weed use reflects a wide opposing belief that allowing
marijuana use would violate moral norms and inflict onerous social
costs on our society.

Sponsors of the California referendum attempt to sidestep the moral
argument by framing the issue in dollars and cents. They assert taxing
legal marijuana could bring $1.4 billion to California's bankrupt
state coffers while cutting law enforcement and incarceration costs.

Passage of the Golden State measure would set up a state-federal
conflict. Federal law trumps state law, but the Obama administration
has wisely stopped federal prosecution of medical marijuana sales in
the more than a dozen states that have approved them. But turning a
blind eye to a defiant challenge on recreational use would be another
matter.

A California yes vote could force the nation into a realistic
conversation on drug prohibition. Casualties from the war on drugs
keep piling up. Nowhere is this more true than in Mexico, where more
than 18,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in the
last three years, including several recent victims with ties to the
U.S. consulate in Juarez. In this country, FBI crime statistics list
narcotics circumstances behind 3,052 murders over five years ending in
2008.

The deaths and millions of arrests, convictions and imprisonments stem
from a trade supplying products Americans obviously want -- and No. 1
is marijuana. The National Institute of Drug Abuse found that more
than 40 percent of high school seniors used marijuana at least once.
Sports Illustrated reports that personnel in the National Football
League see joint smoking "almost epidemic" among 2010 draft-eligible
players. Weed has been depicted as the norm in books and movies for
years, and the medical marijuana revolution in the states now has even
timid broadcast television addressing the issue.

Legalizing marijuana wouldn't end the criminal drug trade and its
violence. Addicts still would crave heroin, cocaine and other hard
narcotics. But decriminalizing marijuana would be a body blow to drug
cartels. Half the annual income for Mexico's violent drug smugglers
comes from marijuana, one Mexican official told the Wall Street
Journal last year. Imagine how many smugglers and street-corner reefer
hustlers would be put out of business.

One recent advocate of considering legalization as part of a new
approach to crime is John J. DiIulio Jr., who served as President
George W. Bush's director of faith-based initiatives. Writing in the
journal Democracy, DiIulio said that the impact of more than 800,000
marijuana-related arrests on crime rates last year was "likely close
to zero." He argued there is "almost no scientific evidence showing
that pot is more harmful to its users' health, more of a 'gateway
drug' or more crime-causing in its effects than alcohol or other legal
narcotic or mind-altering substances."

Legalization backers go further, pointing to Canadian studies
suggesting health-care costs are higher for tobacco or alcohol users
and that police disruption of drug-trafficking gangs contributes to
street violence by causing gang power struggles.

The prospect of reducing violence, undermining gangs, freeing law
enforcement to concentrate on serious crimes and more revenues for
hard-pressed governments -- all are reasons to end the "reefer
madness" in our laws.