COLUMN: PAT JOINS FIGHT AGAINST DRUG WAR

Profound thanks are due televangelist Pat Robertson for stating so
clearly what many of us have been screaming in the wilderness for
years -- that the criminalization of marijuana is a plague on young
people. May he lend courage to politicians who know better but won't
do the right thing for fear of seeming "soft" on drugs.

"We're locking up people who take a couple of puffs of marijuana, and
the next thing they know, they've got 10 years," Robertson said on his
Christian Broadcasting Network show, "The 700 Club." These are
mandatory sentences, he adds, that absurd laws force on judges.

Robertson does not call for legalization of all drugs, as do many
disillusioned law enforcers, judges and prominent economists of all
political stripes. He does say that criminalizing the possession of
small amounts of pot is "costing us a fortune, and it's ruining young
people."

Where are the foes of big government in this? They should note that
the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's budget has more than
quadrupled over the decade to $2.6 billion -- without making a dent in
the quantity of illegal drugs sold in this country. (The narcotics,
meanwhile, are more potent than ever.)

But the DEA bureaucrats know how to expand a mandate. The agency now
operates 86 offices in 63 countries and runs a shadow State Department
that at times mucks up American diplomacy. It employs nearly 11,000
people.

And the DEA is but one expense in the drug war. Add in the costs of
local law enforcement to round up suspects, courts to prosecute them
and jails to hold them, and the war on drugs weighs in at about $50
billion a year. States and municipalities bear most of the costs.

Of course, these numbers don't take into account the lost tax revenue
that legalizing these drugs could generate. Harvard economist Jeffrey
Miron estimates that taxing marijuana like tobacco and alcohol could
add $6.4 billion a year to state and local treasuries.

If drugs were legalized, narco-terrorists (including the Taliban)
would lose their chief source of funds, drug gangs would go out of
business, and the drug-fueled bloodbath now tormenting Mexico would
end. Border security would vastly tighten as drug traffic dried up.

Ending the war on drugs has support across the political spectrum.
Many on the left regard America's drug laws as an assault on personal
freedom and racist in their application. Prominent voices on the right
- -- for example, William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman -- long ago
declared the war on drugs simply a dismal failure.

This month, Britain's former drug czar and defense secretary, Bob
Ainsworth, declared that the war on drugs is "nothing short of a
disaster" and called for government regulation of drug manufacturing
and sales. "We must take the trade away from organized criminals and
hand it to the control of doctors and pharmacists," he said.

No one here is advocating drug use. I have never touched hard drugs,
but the "war" against them lost its romance the day a drug addict
pointed a knife at my gut, demanding money for a fix that should have
cost him no more than a head of celery.

Then there's the rank hypocrisy. President Obama admits to having
"tried" cocaine, and President George W. Bush all but did, refusing to
answer questions about his previous drug use. Yet we still ruin the
lives of teenagers caught using or dealing in far less dangerous marijuana.

The injustice of this is what aroused Pat Robertson. A social
conservative has now filled a gap in the anti-drug-war lineup of
liberals, economic conservatives and libertarians. And we welcome him.