JUDGE, PROSECUTORS: POT IS 'NO BIG DEAL'

It's a messed-up message.

By refusing last week to legalize medical marijuana, the Illinois
House said this: Drug dealers and gangs win. Taxpayers lose.

The response to a recent column about the legalization of pot has me
more convinced than ever the time has come to end a costly, dangerous
and ineffective prohibition.

But don't take my word for it.

Maybe you can imagine my surprise when Iowa 7th District Senior
Associate Judge Douglas McDonald, of Bettendorf, wrote to say he also
hopes to see cases of pot possession "de-emphasized or legalized."

McDonald is 75. He served on the bench from 1988 until his retirement
in 2007. He continues to serve on a part-time basis. He has never
tried marijuana.

"In Scott County, we do about 5,000 indictable misdemeanors a year,
and 25 percent of those are marijuana possessions," he began in an
interview Friday. "(Most) cases have an arraignment, pretrial, motion
hearings, judges, prosecutors, public defenders and police officers
who have to take time off to come to court.

"Public defenders are paid $400 to $500 per case, and they may have
1,000 of them. And that's just Scott County. This is my primary
concern: It's all needless."

McDonald acknowledges he is neither a doctor nor a chemist, but his
19-plus years on the bench have opened his eyes to the realities of
all kinds of drugs. Marijuana, in his estimation, "is no big deal."

"I guess that's not what a judge is supposed to say," he added. "But,
from what I've seen, it doesn't cause people to do bad things. It
doesn't make them angry. Unless you work with it like I do, you
wouldn't know that."

To be clear, the judge does not advocate pot smoking. He is, in fact,
opposed to any form of smoking, because it is harmful.

"But I also know what alcohol does to people, and it's pretty
severe," he said. "I don't see marijuana itself hurting people.
Cocaine does that. Methamphetamine does that. In my opinion and my
experience, marijuana is not like that."

The experiences and opinions of another courtroom regular are
strikingly similar to that of the judge.

James Gierach is a former Cook County, Ill., prosecutor who serves on
the board for a group called LEAP - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

He testified before the Iowa Board of Pharmacy last year, which voted
unanimously to recommend the Iowa legislature legalize medical
marijuana. He said the war on drugs was lost a long time ago and is
only creating more crime.

"Pick a crisis: guns, gangs, prisons we can't afford, health-care
bills we can't pay ... yet 60 percent of the money made by Mexican
drug cartels is coming from marijuana," he said. "All you have to do
is join a gang, get a gun, (because) we've put a pot of gold next to
the thing we said people can't have: drugs."

The criminalization of pot has been especially good for gangs, he
said, because that is where they make their money.

"All you need to go into the drug business is a pair of tennis shoes
and a gun," he said. "We corrupt the police just like we do the kids
because of temptation."

Illegal drugs not only put police in danger via enforcement attempts,
Gierach said, but put officers in a position to make criminal
decisions, too. Drug money that is confiscated in busts often cannot
be precisely accounted for, he said, and thousands of dollars in drug
money often are left in the hands of a cop's conscience.

And then there are the jails.

"We have 2.3 million people in prison - the highest rate of
incarceration in the world," he said Friday. "In Cook County, more
than half the inmates are nonviolent (no gun was used in the crime)
drug offenders.

"The most unproductive thing you can do with a dollar is build a
jail. We are hiring people to watch people who are doing nothing.
Besides, you build a prison, and you don't have the money to build a school."

LEAP's mantra is: Legalize, regulate, tax. Its members point out the
end of alcohol prohibition put Al Capone and his thugs out of
business. They no longer were killing cops and hiding millions.

Maybe all of that is too far from our backyard?

So consider the viewpoint of Jeff Terronez, Rock Island County
state's attorney.

He predicted the "feel-good" medical marijuana law would have created
a slew of legal challenges. But that doesn't mean minor pot
possession should remain a crime.

"My suspicion is this: If the law passes, everyone who smokes
marijuana is going to come up with a reason to use it," he said of
the medical marijuana measure that failed. "If they want to legalize
marijuana, they should legalize it. My personal opinion: If the State
of Illinois legalizes marijuana, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it."

The ones losing sleep, say Gierach and McDonald, are politicians who
are too afraid to enter the fray.

"The most important thing to a legislator is his or her seat," Gierach said.

McDonald told of a conversation he had with a former police
officer-turned-Iowa-legislator, a Republican.

"He was sympathetic to what I was saying, and he agreed with the
inefficiencies and needlessness of criminalization," the judge
recalled. "But his answer was, 'Maybe you know of some Democrat you
could talk to?'

"No one wants to appear soft on crime."

Some people will read this column and, for a moment or two, agree the
arguments for decriminalization make sense. But the myths, hysteria
and propaganda are hard to shake.

In fact, they're almost addicting.