IN THE GOOD OLE DAYS, WE SMOKED POT

There are two things you can count on at 3:30 a.m. at our house: I'll get up
to use the bathroom and the college kids in the nearby apartment complex
still will be whooping it up at the top of their lungs.

Today's college kids party late, and their drug of choice is alcohol, which
tends to make people loud. Starting about 2 a.m., the kids roll in from the
bars, set the stereo speakers on the deck, crank up the tunes and yell
delightedly until daylight.

We're two blocks over, so it's not too bad for us. But the neighbors
alongside the complex are going crazy. They call the cops, the cops chase
one party inside and a half-hour later a different party erupts outside.
Some neighbors have called the cops three times in one night and still not
gotten much sleep.

I'm all for young people and partying. But I tell you what, that kind of
thing didn't happen in my day. No, sir. When I went to college, we smoked
pot when we partied. That kept us mellow and quiet. The last thing we wanted
to do was go outside, make a lot of noise, annoy the neighbors and have them
call the cops.

We need to get back to those days. We need to legalize marijuana.

We should have done it already.

It's chic to complain about the baby-boomer generation. To say we are
self-indulgent and materialistic. To say we haven't fought a great war,
haven't written the great American novel and haven't put an imprint on
society.

I say baloney. Baby boomers demanded sensitivity, tolerance and equality
from society. We made this a better world for black people and women and
gays and gave voice to a dozen previously ignored issues.

But we didn't follow through on drugs. We smoked pot and said we would
legalize it when we ran the world. Well, we run the world now, and we
haven't done anything. We should be ashamed.

The war on drugs is killing us. More than 5 million people have been
arrested in the past decade for marijuana violations. We spend $25 billion a
year for law enforcement, legal fees and incarceration of drug offenders.
The laws and penalties against marijuana violate a half-dozen constitutional
guarantees (privacy, due process, equal protection, freedom of religion).

We are ruining lives and wasting money in a fruitless defense of a false
morality. The urge to intoxicate is as old as mankind. The majority of those
who use drugs recreationally also conduct productive lives. Those who become
addicted to drugs have medical and psychological problems that need
treatment, not punishment.

We should legalize all drugs. But marijuana would be a good start:
Statistics show only one in 100 of those who regularly smoke marijuana goes
on to regularly use cocaine or heroin.

There are two reasons why boomers haven't changed the drug laws.

One is they became parents and became just as fearful and hypocritical as
their parents. They bought into the scare tactics of drug opponents and
didn't trust their children to make wise choices. The other reason is drug
prohibitions lost resonance with baby boomers. They got older, quit smoking
dope and quit caring about the issue.

They need to care again. We made the world better for black people and women
and gays by sustained support of legal changes. We can make the world better
for everyone with sustained support of marijuana legalization.

Then maybe we can all get some sleep in my neighborhood.