LIGHTEN OUR PRISON LOAD: DECRIMINALIZE MARIJUANA

Slowly, grudgingly, the conversion process goes on. One of these
days, America is going to legalize -- more exactly, decriminalize --
narcotic drugs.

Even conservatives are coming around. Not because they'd like to
"use." Their worst fear is for children and grandchildren: that the
kids will be tempted by drug pushers in high school or even elementary school.

That revolting commerce certainly continues to go on, no matter the
"war on drugs." There is just too much money in it. The economic
incentives are too rich.

The question is, are youngsters likelier to be made into addicts by
the criminal trade, with its big-money goals and zero scruples -- or
by legal merchants as regulated as liquor stores and pharmacies?

Recently, Los Angeles author Rita Lowenthal spoke at the South Side's
Joseph-Beth Booksellers about one life destroyed by drug addiction: her son's.

He had started shooting heroin at age 12 or 13, and was not a "bad"
boy but bright, ambitious and musically talented. A quarter-century
later, when an overdose killed him at age 37, he had compiled a
career of overdosing his parents on repeated anguish, arrests, legal
bills, and hospital and court visits.

Lowenthal was asked if legalization wouldn't have been better.

"Absolutely," she said. She couldn't say about cocaine, crack or
other substances that people destroy themselves with. But heroin or
methadone, she felt sure, could be controlled by doctors and drug
store prescriptions at reasonable cost without repeated, tormenting
exposures to the criminal underworld.

No doubt, there's another side to the issue and it is hugely authoritative.

All levels of our government pursue the drug war. Police and border
forces, bureaucracies, politicians, medical and psychological wards,
advertising budgets and public opinion are aboard. The stakes in
pursing this "war" worldwide are multibillion, probably trillion.

The economics of drug law enforcement are staggering. Narcotic
substances themselves are maddeningly cheap and plentiful: poppy
flowers, coca leaves, marijuana shrubs and the like. But they all
inflate enormously by the time they reach the using end, mostly
because they're illegal. This is 1920 liquor Prohibition all over
again and worse.

Look at crime alone. Addicts in a state of craving rob and kill.
Gangs and street violence ruin neighborhoods. Property values don't
have a chance. Neither do teenage boys in the worst of career
training: crime. Drug cartels corrupt entire countries, prevent
general prospering. U.S. prisons are filled. The economic ripples
build up to tsunamis.

So the question comes back: Would legalizing encourage more use? Or less?

Some favor decriminalizing only marijuana, a relatively nonaddictive
"high." This might be enough to satisfy most users and empty many
prison cells. It seems worth a try -- if federal law permitted. And
it should. It's time.