PROHIBITION AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY

Prohibition doesn't work and usually does more harm than the problem
it is aimed at fixing.

That was the clear conclusion of last week's fascinating yet
excruciatingly endless Ken Burns PBS documentary on Prohibition. While
watching, I couldn't help but be struck by the parallels as we decide
whether to embark on our own futile experiment in prohibition.

Fort Collins voters on Nov. 1 will decide whether to ban medical
marijuana operations and medical marijuana-infused products within
city limits. Approval of such measures allows cities and counties to
opt out of the Colorado Medical Marijuana Code.

Predictably, the proposal has incited hyperbole on both sides. One
wails about the sacred mission to protect children from the evil weed.
The other is inflamed about this cruel effort to withhold the healing
medicine that salves the afflicted.

Both sides do their proponents no favors with their extreme arguments.
Youth will not be seduced in a reefer madness fantasy. Those looking
for a buzz will always find the herb - or any other intoxicant -
somewhere. The vast majority still will just say no.

On the other side, the ganja-cures-all-ills argument is - truth be
told - largely a sham. Save the indignant outrage. I'll be the first
to acknowledge the great medicinal value of marijuana for treatment of
many maladies. It is a natural substance often far more effective than
pharmacological pill-popping. Curiously, however, it seems many
strapping young men are afflicted with maladies only reefer can cure.

It's clear that the medical marijuana movement also is a stalking
horse for legalization.

Instead of trying to hold back the relentless tide - putting so much
effort into trying to control this uncontrollable substance - perhaps
it's high time to get serious about legalization locally and nationally.

Efforts to mandate morality never work. Keeping marijuana illegal is
just raising the price. And the price we pay for the crime that comes
with it. Let the government get some of the action in taxes and take
away the economic incentive for the drug cartels literally making a
killing for huge profits.

As the noble but misguided experiment in the 1920s and '30s well
demonstrates, prohibition doesn't work. Getting rid of the substance
in question - even if possible - doesn't diminish the demand. If
anything, it might even grow because of our perverse attraction to the
forbidden.

We never seem to learn. Fort Collins tried this once before. The city
went dry in 1896. The sorrowful event caused The Weekly Courier to
lament in verse: "The melancholy days have come/ The saddest yet, we
fear./For every man in town/ Must now give up his beer."

But the men and probably at least a few ladies found a way around the
booze ban, wetting their whistles clandestinely or at a host of
establishments just beyond city limits.

Fort Collins later allowed the sale of less-powerful 3.2 beer in 1933
with the national repeal of Prohibition and finally said goodbye to
dry in 1969.

Prohibition only drives the prohibited goods underground and to the
fringes. They spring up elsewhere in places less subject to oversight
and more prone to crime.

If we want to end the black market, free bootleggers from the herbal
underground and let them operate in the open. Marijuana can be
legalized without everything going to pot.