HEAD, FED FACE OFF ON MARIJUANA

No one should go to jail just for using marijuana, two debaters
agreed Monday night.

"It's stupid," said Robert Stutman a former CIA and Drug Enforcement
Administration agent.

But Stutman and High Times magazine editor-in-chief Steve Hager
agreed on little else Monday as they argued over whether pot is good
medicine before a packed audience in the University of Georgia's Tate
Student Center Theater.

Billed as "Heads vs. Feds," the debate was sponsored by the Ideas and
Issues Division of UGA's University Union.

Marijuana never should be legalized for recreational use, Stutman argued.

Hager reeled off five reasons to legalize the hemp plant whose leaves
get people high:

Marijuana is good medicine, for glaucoma, some kinds of cancer and a
lot of other conditions, he said, and hemp also is good for the
environment, a renewable resource that could produce not only a legal
medicine, but rope, cloth and cheap paper.

The country wastes an enormous amount of money putting people in jail
for using marijuana - 2.5 million people are behind prison walls
today, versus 150,000 people about 40 years ago, Hager said.

The United States once was famous around the world for building
schools and highways, he said.

"But in the last 20 years, we've just been building prisons. This
system is feeding on itself. It's seeking its profit margins, and we
are its victims."

Legalizing marijuana would help end the corruption bred by the huge
illegal drug industry, Hager said.

"The real price of marijuana is not $5,000 a pound. It's $1." But
$4,999 goes to feed the criminal enterprise, he said.

"We're going to live for the rest of our lives with these crime
cartels that have been built up," he said.

And finally, Hager argued, marijuana is part of his peaceful culture.

"So, please, can I get a little freedom of religion?"

During his turn, Stutman derided Hager's portrayal of pot as a
beneficial medicine.

The real reason people like Hager want to legalize pot is for
pleasure, Stutman said.

"They want it because it's their recreational drug of choice," Stutman said.

And just because pot is natural doesn't mean it's good - arsenic, a
potent poison, sometimes occurs naturally in drinking water, he pointed out.

Pot is dangerous the same way alcohol is, Stutman said.

When people are high, their depth perception isn't good, and they're
more prone to have traffic wrecks, he said.

If pot was legalized, millions more people would use it, increasing
crashes, he said.

But the main reason not to legalize marijuana is because smoking it
causes cancer - it clearly adds to testicular cancer rates, and
probably to lung cancer, Stutman said.

"Any doctor who tells you to smoke something because it's good for
your health is a damn fool," Stutman said.

Hager conceded that people shouldn't drive after using marijuana, and
that they shouldn't smoke marijuana.

"You can't defend smoking, so if you're going to use marijuana,
vaporize it, drink it in tea or use it in brownies," he said