IT'S HIGH TIME THAT MARIJUANA LAWS BE LIBERALIZED

Unfortuantely, Elected Officials Do Not Favor Legally Controlling And
Taxing Marijuana Products

Twenty-nine-year-old Scott Bryant had just settled down to watch TV
with his 7-year-old son on the night of April 17, 1995, when 13
Wisconsin sheriff's deputies burst through his front door looking for
marijuana. Bryant, who was unarmed, was shot and killed as his young
son helplessly looked on. Police seized less than 3 grams of
marijuana in the no-knock raid. On review, the county district
attorney ruled that the shooting was "not in any way justified."
Bryant was a victim -- not of marijuana, but of marijuana prohibition.

During the last decade, more than 6.5 million Americans have been
arrested on marijuana charges, more than the entire populations of
Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Montana, North Dakota,
South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming combined. As in the case of Bryant,
nearly 90 percent of these arrests were for the simple possession of
marijuana for personal use, not for cultivation or sale.

Annually, state and local justice costs for marijuana arrests are now
estimated to be $7.6 billion, approximately $10,400 per arrest.
However, despite this massive expenditure and the threat of arrest,
approximately 80 million Americans, including former President Bill
Clinton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, self-identify as
having used marijuana. Nearly 15 million Americans admit to being
current users of cannabis. It is time for the United States'
marijuana laws to reflect this reality, not deny it.

While most of the world has liberalized their marijuana laws,
reflecting the values and mores of their citizens, other than state-
based efforts to pass laws that protect medical marijuana patients,
in the United States, marijuana prohibition is unfortunately favored
by elected officials rather than legally controlling and taxing
marijuana products.

Most of the government agencies, private corporations and some people
who publicly support arresting marijuana consumers and benefit from
the United States' misguided marijuana prohibition are: law
enforcement (i.e., Drug Enforcement Administration) and so-called
anti-drug governmental agencies (i.e., Office of National Drug
Control and Policy), private anti-drug groups (i.e., Drug Free
America Foundation), drug testing companies; and alcohol, tobacco and
pharmaceutical companies that do not want to compete with legal and
taxed marijuana.

Critics of liberalizing the United States' marijuana laws argue that
marijuana isn't a "harmless" substance. They're correct; marijuana
isn't harmless. In fact, no substance is, including those that are
legal. However, as acknowledged by a study that appears in the
current issue of the journal Current Opinion in Pharmacology,
"Overall, by comparison with other drugs used mainly for
'recreational' purposes, cannabis (is) rated to be a relatively safe
drug." Indeed, by far the greatest danger to health posed by the
adult use of cannabis stems from a criminal arrest and incarceration.

Further, what possible rationale can be put forward by today's policy
makers that allows for the sale and taxation of alcohol and tobacco
products by state and federal governments, while at the same time
prohibiting the responsible use of cannabis by adults -- even for
sick and dying medical patients?

A drug like tobacco is widely acknowledged by the government and
general public as an unhealthy lifestyle choice. Consequently, there
has been nearly a 50 percent reduction of smoking in the United
States since 1970. This important change in the public's choice of
lifestyles was brought about by credible and verifiable
public-education campaigns, noncriminal sanctions and pragmatic
taxation schemes -- not taxpayer-funded DARE-like programs in the
public schools, Partnership for a Drug Free America propaganda
polluting modern advertising or demonizing the users, sellers and
growers of tobacco.

Speaking before Congress on the 40th anniversary of marijuana
prohibition, Aug. 2, 1977, former President Jimmy Carter stated,
"Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an
individual than use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear
than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private for
personal use." More than 25 years later, the time has come to heed
his advice and to stop arresting the millions of otherwise law-
abiding adults who use marijuana.

Allen F. St. Pierre is executive director and Paul Armentano is
senior policy analyst for the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws.