TAKING THE CRIME OUT OF CANNABIS

America's laws punishing the possession of marijuana for personal use do
more harm than good.

Students at UCSB and other universities across the country can attest that
young people too often bear an uneven burden from this preoccupation with
prosecuting such offenses. Congress reached another low point in drug
policy last summer when lawmakers voted to deny federal financial aid to
college students with recent drug convictions.

Hopes and ambitions of young people are derailed or even extinguished.
Prosecutions for recreational use of drugs of all sorts continue to pack
prisons beyond capacity.

But it is marijuana that best demonstrates the ill-rationality of federal
policy makers.

Take the medical use of marijuana by patients who have physician approval.
Voters in California and numerous other Western states have gone to the
ballot box to legalize it. But federal drug officials and Congress refuse
to acknowledge the government's own studies that demonstrate how marijuana
helps ease the suffering of cancer victims and other seriously ill patients.

The federal government continues to list marijuana under the Controlled
Substances Act as a Schedule 1 drug, a classification for drugs with "no
acceptable medical benefits."

Not even cocaine is on Schedule 1.

This hypocrisy over medical marijuana shows how hard it will be to loosen
the laws for other personal uses of cannabis. But it's high time to begin
discussions about decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of the
plant and giving people the right to decide what's best for their own bodies.

We sympathize with parents who worry that lightening marijuana penalties
would send a wrong signal to young people about drug use. But parents can
counter that by counseling their children just as parents do about alcohol.
Leave the government out of it.

But beginning such a debate about marijuana laws will take political
courage -- a quality that's become a casualty of this country's
all-consuming war on drugs. Leadership will have to come from the
electorate and overseas where more realistic attitudes about marijuana
continue to emerge.

So we welcome news from Britain that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government
will relax drug laws so users of small amounts of marijuana will no longer
face arrest.

Tomorrow we'll examine how Britain provides a model for the United States
to follow.

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