A HEALTHY DOSE OF EMPIRICISM FOR THE DEBATE ON POT LEGALITY

Marijuana legalization has been raised countless times by
politicians, newspapers, hippies and, of course, college newspapers.
Again and again it has come up, to the point that it has become
somewhat trite - a cliche policy issue that is urgent for no one. But
just as a reminder: Marijuana for personal use is still illegal.

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has
ceased federal prosecution of licensed medical marijuana clinics,
ceding enforcement to state control. At the same time, though,
Attorney General Eric Holder has said that legalization of marijuana
as a commercial product was "off the table."

Even so, the debate is not over. Information about the real effects
of marijuana use, both sporadic and habitual, abounds.

But first, the debate must be put in context: It would be impossible
to understand why a drug with relatively mild side effects remains
illegal without looking at the history of drug enforcement.

The 60s were a time of social upheaval. Drugs were an integral part
of youth culture, although LSD and ecstasy were relatively nascent.
Lawmakers saw the effects of these drugs on their users - depression,
memory loss, mental disease - and passed a flurry of anti-drug laws.
For the most part, all drugs were conflated into one big evil - no
distinction between the effects and severity of each drug was drawn
by lawmakers.

The 80s and early 90s saw a spike in crime. Because much of it was
drug-related, both federal and state legislatures passed stringent
laws mandating minimum sentences and authorizing huge packages of
money for drug-law enforcement.

Crime rates dropped again in 1993, but drug laws for the most part
did not change. Although the Supreme Court struck down federal
mandatory minimum sentences, many state courts did not. And the War
on Drugs continued to grow in popularity and in budget. As of 2009,
the federal government spends $50 billion a year on enforcement
alone. That number ignores state enforcement costs, as well as the
$150 billion spent on policing and courts and $68 billion spent on prisons.

And for all that money, what have we got in return? Nothing. The War
on Drugs has not yielded any significant drop in drug use, yet money
continues to flow into enforcement. Similar to Prohibition, rates of
use have not dropped. Also similar to Prohibition, smuggling and
related turf-wars have spiked.

The amount spent on prisons mystifies as well. Although part of a
larger criticism of American prisons - a country that has 5 percent
of the world's population and 25 percent of its prisoners - the
amount of money spent on keeping marijuana users in jail is ludicrous.

By rough estimation, if $68 billion is spent on prison upkeep
annually, and one-third of those in prison are in for non-violent
drug-related crime, and 47 percent of all those are in for marijuana
arrests, then that comes out to about $9.5 billion dollars a year
spent keeping pot-smokers in jail. For comparison, a fleet of F-22
fighter-jets was vetoed a few years back because it was too
expensive. Its total proposed cost? $6 billion.

While on the economic track, let's talk about potential revenue from
harvesting marijuana; California's growers bring in $14 billion
annually. A 10 percent tax would bring the state $1.4 billion every
year. For a state so buried in red ink, that proposal must look
promising. If California alone could raise that much from a 10
percent tax, imagine the revenue Uncle Sam could raise. Saying the
government shouldn't profit from immoral activity is a specious
argument - gambling, tobacco and alcohol industries are all taxed
(and subsidized) by the government.

Another huge source of worry for the country is Mexican cartels - the
cartels control large parts of the country, and the murder and
kidnapping from drug wars that were once contained to Mexico have
crept over the border into Texas and Arizona. Legalizing would cut 65
percent of their profits, and destroy a large part of their
motivation for drug-fueled killings.

But all this would be meaningless if marijuana was truly detrimental.
After all, legalizing something that kills or has a high rate of
addiction would't make any sense, would it? Yet an objective look at
the short and long-term effects of marijuana are next to nothing.
This is not new information: both Nixon and Reagan formed blue-ribbon
commissions to study the effects of marijuana, but when both
concluded that marijuana was far less severe than alcohol or tobacco,
the results were dismissed.

First, addiction rates are tiny: Canadian government and RAND
Corporation studies have shown that addiction rates for those who use
pot regularly are a steady 9 percent, considerably less than alcohol
and tobacco addiction rates.

Second, myths that marijuana leads to schizophrenia, depression or
harder drugs have been disproved time and time again by virtually
every objective research agency. While it may be true that those who
do hard drugs started off with pot, that by no means proves that
those who do pot automatically will go on to harder drugs. Given the
rate of at least occasional use of pot - 15 percent nationwide -
wouldn't there be a lot more users of hard drugs if there was indeed
a causal link between pot and hard drugs?

The mushrooming of medical marijuana clinics and the drug's
application for pain relief for a diversity of diseases is a
convincing fact, as well. Surely a drug with virtually no
one-time-use damages is better than the prescription painkillers now
legally used. Among their side effects are vomiting, headaches,
dizziness, liver and kidney failure. To me, it's an easy choice.

Virtually every myth about marijuana's long-term effects have been
disproved, but one fact is undeniable: The damage from marijuana to
the teen brain is noticeable. A brain still in formation is at much
greater risk for short-term memory loss, among other symptoms.

Still, though, to say that kids may be affected is a specious
argument. Alcohol and tobacco are legal, so how does law prevent kids
from buying? Age restrictions. Very simply, there is no difference
between allowing the marketing of alcohol and tobacco and allowing
the marketing of marijuana. Fact clearly isn't the barrier in the way
of legalization - it is the outmoded beliefs of the past that hinder
passage of more just, balanced drug laws.