Pubdate: Mon, 14 Nov 2005
Source: Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Copyright: 2005, Denver Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.rockymountainnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/371
Author: Jack Woehr

SPEAKOUT: TIME HAS COME TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

The Rocky Mountain News editorializes that the city of Denver must 
enforce the state pot law in the wake of the repeal of the city 
ordinance by voters, as if some profound prinicple were at stake here 
("City must enforce state pot law," Nov. 7). In fact, the marijuana 
laws of Colorado and the United States are a profound negation of 
American principle.

First, the marijuana laws are unconstitutional. The Supreme Court 
denied Woodrow Wilson's attempt to extend wartime prohibition of 
alcohol to the post-World War I era, necessitating the 18th 
Amendment, later wisely repealed.

Where is the constitutional amendment enabling marijuana prohibition?

Next, the laws were founded and steeped in racism against Mexicans 
and African-Americans. A perusal of the Congressional Record for 1939 
is educational in this regard, albeit shocking to modern sensibilities.

Third, the laws make no sense. Although Mayor John Hickenlooper frets 
about marijuana as a "gateway drug," all reputable research suggests 
that much more easily obtainable cigarettes and alcohol are the 
"gateway drugs" of America's youth. Shall we lock up Hickenlooper 
himself in a cell with the Coors family?

Finally, the entire drug panic in American life is like a national 
mental illness. The fanatical element of this vice crusade was 
instituted by two presidents (Nixon and Reagan) in whose 
adminstrations the CIA undisputably engaged in massive drug 
smuggling. This crusade has effectively elevated the laws of 
contraband above the laws of theft and murder; has institutionalized 
the suborning of perjury in the federal prosecutorial organs; has 
chipped away at several items of the Bill of Rights such as the 
Fourth Amendment; has corrupted the intelligence organs of the world 
with a wash of easy drug money; has erected narcocracies and terror 
in parts of Latin America and Asia; all without making much of a dent 
in consumption.

What sort of inhumanity spawns the belief that the vice of a drug 
habit can be stemmed by draconian law enforcement? Or that such a 
practice enhances the safety or comity of our civilization? The 
religious prohibition of alcohol in the Muslim world has been 
vigorously enforced since the seventh century, yet millions of 
Muslims still drink: Is that a model for America? Better to take the 
money and erect Betty Ford clinics for the poor, and to frown on the 
vice through social disapprobation, as we do with other vices.

Smoking pot is indeed a vice. It can sap the will and damage the 
lungs. But overall, marijuana is indeed safer than alcohol, as all 
but the purchased science of the prohibitionists recognizes.

The acrid smell of marijuana smoke pervades modern American culture. 
Petty vice will always be with us. Pot just ain't worth the fanatical 
and hopeless effort to extirpate it. It's time to give up the crusade 
and legalize marijuana.

Jack Woehr has three times been on the ballot for public office in 
Colorado on a platform of ending the war on drugs.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman