TIME TO GET REAL, PRO-POT ACTIVISTS

Pro-pot activists were self-righteous, dishonest and boorish, but in
the end even their antics couldn't discredit legislation to legalize
medical-marijuana dispensaries in this statea tribute to lawmakers
such as Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, and Rep. Tom Massey, R-Poncha
Springs, who kept their eyes on the ball.

"This has been a long, strange trip," Romer said of the nearly
finished effort to offer patients in severe, chronic pain with
another option for possible relief. House Bill 1284 will also drive
bad actors out of the business, closely monitor the source of the
plants, and preserve the right of local communities to ban
dispensaries altogether.

Barring a major surprise, this imperfect but worthwhile bill should
soon be signed into law.

Not that most activists who showed up at hearings, debates and
protests are likely to display any gratitude for the extraordinary
birth of state-sanctioned clinics selling marijuana. They're too busy
heaping abuse on the lawmakers who engineered the feat.

"The amount of crap Massey and I have taken is unbelievable," Romer
told me, in terms of nasty e-mails, for example, and face-to-face
denunciations. And he means from people on the dispensaries' side.
From supposed allies -- allies who in fact believe in a
medical-marijuana marketplace without meaningful constraints.

Nor was nastiness the worst offense committed by Pot Nation. The
self-righteous dishonesty was far more galling.

For example, it has become an official article of faith among those
seeking a Wild West marketplace for dispensaries that the retail sale
of marijuana is a constitutional right, thanks to Amendment 20. But
of course no one was making such a claim a year ago, before
dispensaries appeared on the scene. Nor did anyone argue during or
after the campaign for the amendment a decade ago that the measure
legalized commercial dispensaries. Most proponents surely know this,
and yet have apparently concluded that anything goes in the holy
quest to broker the backdoor legalization of pot.

After all, isn't the struggle to legalize marijuana analogous to the
Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century? What, you weren't
aware of this delusional comparison? Neither was I, until an activist
attorney put the case to me in an e-mail, even citing Rosa Parks.

Pot Nation can't even bring itself to admit that marijuana has any
worrisome side effects related to addiction, health, safety or state
of mind. The product is entirely benign, many claim, even beneficial.
"Let's teach our kids that marijuana has huge benefits," declared
professor Bob Melamede of the University of Colorado at Colorado
Springs in one of many recent over-the-top expressions of this conviction.

Not that it's easy to quantify marijuana's dangers, given the thicket
of apparently conflicting studies. If you read only the footnoted
literature from NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws, you would come away mostly reassured. At the opposite
pole are documents from the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, which connect marijuana abuse to "respiratory
illnesses, problems with learning and memory, increased heart rate,
and impaired coordination," not to mention "increased rates of
anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and schizophrenia" and "addiction."

Both NORML and the White House have reason to cherry-pick evidence
and exaggerate their case. But what about those in the field who
treat drug dependency, such as Christian Thurstone, a Denver
psychiatrist who told Westword, "In the scientific community, there's
no debate about whether or not marijuana is an addictive substance.
We know that marijuana triggers the same parts of the brain as all
other addictive substances, like nicotine, cocaine and heroin."

Are these experts all deluded by personal motivation as well?

Pot activists seem to believe they can rest their case if marijuana
is less dangerous in some ways than alcohol. It so happens, however,
that most of us who appreciate the legal status of booze have never
denied that it ruins many lives. We simply don't believe in outlawing
every activity that carries a social cost or personal risk. That's
not what a free society should do.

Maybe it's time marijuana advocates adopted a similar degree of
honesty regarding their own drug of choice.