MAKE PEACE WITH POT

Starting in the fall, pharmacies in British Columbia will sell
marijuana for medicinal purposes, without a prescription, under a
pilot project devised by Canada's national health service. The plan
follows a 2002 report by a Canadian Senate committee that found there
were "clear, though not definitive" benefits for using marijuana in
the treatment of chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and other
ailments. Both Prime Minister Paul Martin and Stephen Harper, leader
of the opposition conservatives, support the decriminalization of marijuana.

Oddly, the strongest criticism of the Canadian proposal has come from
patients already using medical marijuana who think the government,
which charges about $110 an ounce, supplies lousy pot. "It is of
incredibly poor quality," said one patient. Another said, "It tastes
like lumber." A spokesman for Health Canada promised the agency would
try to offer a better grade of product.

Needless to say, this is a far cry from the situation in the United
States, where marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance, a
drug that the government says has a high potential for abuse, no
accepted medical uses and no safe level of use.

Under federal law it is illegal to possess any amount of marijuana
anywhere in the United States. Penalties for a first marijuana offense
range from probation to life without parole. Although 11 states have
decriminalized marijuana, most still have tough laws against the drug.
In Louisiana, selling one ounce can lead to a 20-year prison sentence.
In Washington State, supplying any amount of marijuana brings a
recommended prison sentence of five years.

About 700,000 people were arrested in the United States for violating
marijuana laws in 2002 (the most recent year for which statistics are
available) - more than were arrested for heroin or cocaine. Almost 90
percent of these marijuana arrests were for simple possession, a crime
that in most cases is a misdemeanor. But even a misdemeanor conviction
can easily lead to time in jail, the suspension of a driver's license,
the loss of a job. And in many states possession of an ounce is a
felony. Those convicted of a marijuana felony, even if they are
disabled, can be prohibited from receiving federal welfare payments or
food stamps. Convicted murderers and rapists, however, are still
eligible for those benefits.

The Bush administration has escalated the war on marijuana, raiding
clinics that offer medical marijuana and staging a nationwide roundup
of manufacturers of drug paraphernalia. In November 2002 the Office of
National Drug Control Policy circulated an "open letter to America's
prosecutors" spelling out the administration's views. "Marijuana is
addictive," the letter asserted. "Marijuana and violence are linked .
. . no drug matches the threat posed by marijuana."

This tough new stand has generated little protest in Congress. Even
though the war on marijuana was begun by President Ronald Reagan in
1982, it has always received strong bipartisan support. Some of the
toughest drug war legislation has been backed by liberals, and the
number of annual marijuana arrests more than doubled during the
Clinton years. In fact, some of the strongest opposition to the arrest
and imprisonment of marijuana users has come from conservatives like
William F. Buckley, the economist Milton Friedman and Gary Johnson,
the former Republican governor of New Mexico.

This year the White House's national antidrug media campaign will
spend $170 million, working closely with the nonprofit Partnership for
a Drug-Free America. The idea of a "drug-free America" may seem
appealing. But it's hard to believe that anyone seriously hopes to
achieve that goal in a nation where millions of children are routinely
given Ritalin, antidepressants are prescribed to cure shyness, and the
pharmaceutical industry aggressively promotes pills to help
middle-aged men have sex.

Clearly, some recreational drugs are thought to be O.K. Thus it isn't
surprising that the Partnership for a Drug-Free America originally
received much of its financing from cigarette, alcohol and
pharmaceutical companies like Hoffmann-La Roche, Philip Morris, R. J.
Reynolds and Anheuser-Busch.

More than 16,000 Americans die every year after taking nonsteroidal
anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen. No one in
Congress, however, has called for an all-out war on Advil. Perhaps the
most dangerous drug widely consumed in the United States is the one
that I use three or four times a week: alcohol. It is literally
poisonous; you can die after drinking too much. It is directly linked
to about one-quarter of the suicides in the United States, almost half
the violent crime and two-thirds of domestic abuse. And the level of
alcohol use among the young far exceeds the use of marijuana.
According to the Justice Department, American children aged 11 to 13
are four times more likely to drink alcohol than to smoke pot.

None of this should play down the seriousness of marijuana use. It is
a powerful, mind-altering drug. It should not be smoked by young
people, schizophrenics, pregnant women and people with heart
conditions. But it is remarkably nontoxic. In more than 5,000 years of
recorded use, there is no verified case of anybody dying of an
overdose. Indeed, no fatal dose has ever been established.

Over the past two decades billions of dollars have been spent fighting
the war on marijuana, millions of Americans have been arrested and
tens of thousands have been imprisoned. Has it been worth it?
According to the government's National Household Survey on Drug Abuse,
in 1982 about 54 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25
had smoked marijuana. In 2002 the proportion was . . . about 54 percent.

We seem to pay no attention to what other governments are doing.
Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium have
decriminalized marijuana. This year Britain reduced the penalty for
having small amounts. Legislation is pending in Canada to
decriminalize possession of about half an ounce (the Bush
administration is applying strong pressure on the Canadian government
to block that bill). In Ohio, possession of up to three ounces has
been decriminalized for years - and yet liberal marijuana laws have
not transformed Ohio into a hippy-dippy paradise; conservative
Republican governors have been running the state since 1991.

Here's an idea: people who smoke too much marijuana should be treated
the same way as people who drink too much alcohol. They need help, not
the threat of arrest, imprisonment and unemployment.

More important, denying a relatively safe, potentially useful medicine
to patients is irrational and cruel. In 1972 a commission appointed by
President Richard Nixon concluded that marijuana should be
decriminalized in the United States. The commission's aim was not to
encourage the use of marijuana, but to "demythologize it." Although
Nixon rejected the commission's findings, they remain no less valid
today: "For the vast majority of recreational users," the 2002
Canadian Senate committee found, "cannabis use presents no harmful
consequences for physical, psychological or social well-being in
either the short or long term."

The current war on marijuana is a monumental waste of money and a
source of pointless misery. America's drug warriors, much like its
marijuana smokers, seem under the spell of a powerful intoxicant. They
are not thinking clearly.