CAMPAIGN FOR MICHIGAN POT PROPOSAL IS ALMOST KAPUT

News From The War On The War On Drugs:

Michigan's homegrown repeal of prohibition on marijuana, after spending most
of the year collecting signatures for a ballot proposal in 2002, is more or
less kaput.

Organizer Greg Schmid extended the deadline twice in an attempt to rally his
motley band of volunteer circulators to meet the 300,000 signature target
but admitted last week they won't make it.

Schmid theorizes that many of the group's volunteers have signed petitions
they've neglected to turn in. (Insert obligatory stoner joke here.) The same
thing happened when they tried to collect signatures for a ballot proposal
in 2000.

Undaunted, Schmid says he's ready to join a national coalition that has a
track record of some success and perhaps the ability, notably absent in the
Michigan-based group, to raise enough money to mount a real campaign.

The national group, California-based Campaign for New Drug Policies, wants
to sell Michigan voters on the so-called "treatment not incarceration"
method for drug users. Schmid says they'll also go after Michigan's
mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers.

The natural tendency is to dismiss Schmid's optimism about this new venture
for what it is, more rodomontade from a Saginaw lawyer whose skills as a
political strategist fall somewhere between Don Quixote and Mr. Magoo.

But we won't.

In part, because Schmid (a lifelong non-drug user) also has the endearing
qualities of charm and good humor shared by his political mentors. In part,
because it would be nice if he and the drug law reformers succeeded.

Recognizing that this is an issue about which reasonable people can disagree
(and about which many people seem impervious to reason) consider this:

* It's not working. We were fighting the war on terrorism for all of about
four weeks before national opinion leaders began to grow restive about our
"lack of progress." In the war on drugs, our progress after four decades can
be measured by interviewing anyone between the ages of 15 and 25. Ask them
how long it would take to track down some reefer.

For terrorists, it will probably pay to be patient. For the war on drugs,
it's hard to understand why our patience hasn't run out.

* It's hypocritical. Trying to make young people (the target audience in the
war on drugs) distinguish between the drug sold at the corner store --
alcohol -- and the drug that earns a trip to the police station -- marijuana
- -- is futile.

Of course, credible arguments can be made that both should be avoided. And
significant evidence exists that neither is ruinous in moderation. But it
strains credulity to believe that kids can be convinced that one is worse
than the other simply because it's illegal.

* It's ridiculously expensive. Never mind arguments that drug laws put a
bunch of people in prison that don't belong there. Contrary to the claims of
the legalization crowd, there are almost no first-time users in prison, and
most of the dealers that are locked up did a lot of other bad stuff (like
use weapons and assault people).

But that doesn't mean that a completely outsized portion of police,
prosecutorial and court time isn't tied up with low-level drug offenses, for
which the end result is little deterrence and an enormous loss of
productivity for everyone involved.

That said, the odds against Schmid and the reformers are almost impossibly
long. Most people, with some justification, associate drug use with
degradation, degeneracy and shattered lives. Politically, it is not
persuasive to argue that the degradation is in significant part voluntary.

Nor is it possible to avoid the inherent pitfalls of mounting a campaign in
which the natural constituency, those most directly affected by drug laws,
are criminals. It may be a catch-22 (they wouldn't be criminals if the laws
were changed), but you never see United Drug Convicts on the endorsement
lists in winning campaigns.

Maybe the folks from California can figure a way around those obstacles. Or
maybe, like Magoo, they refuse to recognize them. Either way, we say have at
it.