SMOKE SIGNALS

TWO VOICES Smoke Signals Next Saturday's rally to legalize
marijuana raises a key question: Should the government's desire to
protect us outweigh our right to choose? Tens of thousands of people
are expected to converge on Boston Common for Saturday's rally in
support of the legalization of marijuana, and both Steven Epstein and
Lea Palleria Cox will be there with buttons on and pamphlets in hand.
Epstein, a lawyer living in Georgetown, is a founder of the
Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition who has worked to get
nonbinding decriminalization questions on ballots around the state
this November. Cox, of Hanover, is a Massachusetts delegate for Drug
Watch International, fighting Epstein's legalization movement. They
answered our question, should marijuana be legal?

EPSTEIN It's a plant. Marijuana, should be legal for adults to
consume. It should be regulated and taxed along the lines of alcohol.

COX Our greatest example of why not to legalize is what we've done
with alcohol. It's nice to say keep it away from kids, but there's no way
that's possible. Once you make it legal, it will be more accessible,
and it will be had by children. You can't go the way of alcohol. If they
smoke more than once, they're going to feel that high, and they're
going to come back for more. It's addictive. It's a very euphoric drug.

EPSTEIN So then would you please explain to me why, according to the
federal government, there are some 80-plus million people in America
over the age of 18 who have used marijuana at least once in their
lifetime, and yet according to the same government, there are only
about 14 million current users of marijuana. So why do people use it
in their college years and put it down if it has the properties you
say it has?

COX It depends on the individual. You can't make blanket statements.
That's the danger of marijuana. They still don't know all the
chemicals in marijuana and how the chemicals interact with each other
and then with what you have in your body.

EPSTEIN Let's talk about a Constitution in which we were promised,
when we entered into this contract some 200 years ago, that we were
creating this government to protect the individual's rights to life,
liberty, property, and happiness. The government is intruding on [my
rights] when it tells me what drugs I can and cannot put into my body.

Cox That's ridiculous argument. The government is there to protect
us. Anything that endangers anyone should not be legal. Marijuana
changes body chemistry. It'll probably make people feel good, which I
don't like to tell them, because they're going to find that out if
they smoke, but the last thing they want to do is to do anything that
changes their brain chemistry, and marijuana does. Anyone who takes
any drug is playing Russian roulette. You don't know how it's going
to affect your body. You do not take a chance. It's illegal because
it's harmful. That's the bottom line.

EPSTEIN You have yet to define "harmful" How harmful is it? Is it as
harmful as holding a gun to my head? Automobiles are harmful. You can
be using an automobile specifically as it's designed to be, and a
tire blows out. What is the likelihood that marijuana will shorten
someone's life, let alone kill them? It's illegal because of
political inertia. It's racism. In 1911, when the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts first adopted its prohibitions and regulations and
criminal penalties for the possession of cannabis without a doctor's
prescription, because it was lawfully prescribed at the time, I what
racial groups were using marijuana? Immigrants.

COX It doesn't matter. It's illegal now because it's harmful. EPSTEIN
We do agree on one thing, which is that children should not smoke
marijuana. COX Right. And there would be no way we could keep it away
from them if it were legal.

EPSTEIN There's no way we're keeping it away from them now. [My
movement supports] punishing individuals who sell marijuana to
children. COX Cigarettes and alcohol are already legal, and I want to
stop the same thing from happening to marijuana. The cigarette
companies knew what I they were packaging, just as the [marijuana
advocates] know what they're packaging. You can't just give poison to
anyone. It's not innocuous. Just ask any parent who's dealt with kids
whose lives have been ruined by marijuana. We should be doing
everything we can.

EPSTEIN Drug testing makes another corporation rich. We can
urine-test everybody all the time. We can take a hair test and just
wait a little longer to get the results. We can use wipes and just
wipe their hands to see if they've been in contact with marijuana. We
can do all sorts of things to give us a police state. Because the
only solution to the problem besides a police state is legalize it,
regulate it, and accept it.

COX The war on poverty has been in existence for years. Now you can
say we still have poverty, so should we stop fighting it? No. You
have to keep fighting. You have to keep the laws that make marijuana
illegal. Once you break down and you let the door open, you're going
to have a bigger problem! This is an edited transcript.