PROPAGANDA SURROUNDS POT USAGE

For those of you who thought the war on drugs had been preempted by Baby
Bush's war on terrorism -- think again.

Campus police are promising to haul in more drug offenders than a Cypress
Hill Concert, and the incendiary perpetrators being sought out are not
burly bikers searching for "Lucy in the Sky" or pro-Colombians with a
fetish for nose candy. The bad boys targeted by the badges are none other
than the friends of Mary Jane.

As if we needed anyone to tell us that smoking the ganja is bad. We grew up
with Nancy Reagan speaking the gospel of "just say no," and are well aware
of the supposed relationship between marijuana use and the evils of the world.

The belief that legalizing marijuana might lead to a society absent of
ambition and destined for harder drug use has caused a $1.2 billion a year
spending habit by the government to keep 60,000 marijuana offenders behind
bars. Now that's an addiction that is quite destructive to society --
especially the economy.

Opponents of the reefer are quick to cite it as a gateway drug that leads
to heavier drugs other than the addictive substance in a bag of Lay's
potato chips.

They're just waiting for casual pot smokers to evolve into Pinky and the
Brain and begin waking at dusk daily to devise a new plot to smoke out the
entire world.

The argument of marijuana as a gateway drug is magnificently spun through
statistics to purport hardcore drug use and imprisonment as the product of
marijuana use rather than what it really is -- an association.

If you were told a study done by the Center for Addiction and Substance
Abuse found that 12 to 17 year olds who had engaged in the use of
marijuana, cigarettes, and alcohol were 266 times more likely to use
cocaine than 12 to 17 year olds who had never used the substances, you
might be appalled, but if you were told that 82 percent of 12 to 17 year
olds who used all three drugs didn't touch cocaine, you'd sleep easier at
night.

Despite an increase in prison penalties and record-breaking annual
marijuana arrests in the 90s, twice as many teenagers reported illegal drug
use in 2000 as did teenagers in 1992.

So why spend $180 million more on marijuana ads that will serve to further
alienate drug users?

The war on drugs attempts to strike fear into the heart of parents by
claiming that if Suzy lights up a joint she'll never become a productive
citizen; the same slant that was placed on cigarettes in the early 1900s.

Now we know that cigarettes cause cancer and not a lack of motivation, but
still fail to see marijuana in the correct light.

So much emphasis is placed on drug use being bad, and the stigma
surrounding drugs forces drug use to go underground, creating a world of
shadows where drugs are more easily abused. By legalizing marijuana we take
it off the streets and help take the guilt away from the use of the drug.

Then we can more openly discuss the heart of the problem, which is not the
substance, but what makes people overuse marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes.

- -- Sean Crane is a senior in magazines