Pubdate: Thu, 03 Dec 2009
Source: Daily Camera (Boulder, CO)
Copyright: 2009 The Daily Camera.
Contact:  http://www.dailycamera.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/103
Author: George Will
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/author/George+Will (George Will)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH

DENVER -- Inside the green neon sign, which is shaped like a 
marijuana leaf, is a red cross.

The cross serves the fiction that most transactions in the store -- 
which is what it really is -- involve medicine.

The Justice Department recently announced that federal laws against 
marijuana would not be enforced for possession of marijuana that 
conforms to states' laws. In 2000, Colorado legalized medical marijuana.

Since Justice's decision, the average age of the 400 persons a day 
seeking "prescriptions" at Colorado's multiplying medical marijuana 
dispensaries has fallen precipitously. Many new customers are college students.

Customers -- this, not patients, is what most really are -- tell 
doctors at the dispensaries that they suffer from insomnia, anxiety, 
headaches, premenstrual syndrome, "chronic pain," whatever, and pay 
nominal fees for "prescriptions." Most really just want to smoke pot.

So says Colorado's attorney general, John Suthers, an honest and 
thoughtful man trying to save his state from institutionalizing such 
hypocrisy. His dilemma is becoming commonplace: Thirteen states have, 
and 15 more are considering, laws permitting medical use of marijuana.

Realizing they could not pass legalization of marijuana, some people 
who favor that campaigned to amend Colorado's Constitution to 
legalize sales for medicinal purposes.

Marijuana has medical uses -- e.g., to control nausea caused by 
chemotherapy -- but the helpful ingredients can be conveyed with 
other medicines.

Medical marijuana was legalized but, Suthers says, no serious regime 
was then developed to regulate who could buy -- or grow -- it. 
(Caregivers? For how many patients? And in what quantities, and for 
what "medical uses?")

Today, Colorado communities can use zoning to restrict dispensaries 
or can ban them because, even if federal policy regarding medical 
marijuana is passivity, selling marijuana remains against federal 
law. But Colorado's probable future has unfolded in California, which 
in 1996 legalized sales of marijuana to persons with doctors' "prescriptions."

Fifty-six percent of Californians support legalization, and Roger 
Parloff reports ("How Marijuana Became Legal" in a September issue of 
Fortune) that they essentially have this. He notes that many 
California "patients" arrive at dispensaries "on bicycles, roller 
skates or skateboards." A Los Angeles city councilman estimates that 
there are about 600 dispensaries in the city. If so, they outnumber 
the Starbucks stores there.

The councilman wants to close dispensaries whose intent is profit 
rather than "compassionate" distribution of medicine.

Good luck with that: Privacy considerations will shield doctors from 
investigations of their lucrative 15-minute transactions with "patients."

Colorado's medical marijuana dispensaries have hired lobbyists to 
seek taxation and regulation, for the same reason Nevada's brothel 
industry wants to be taxed and regulated by the state: The Nevada 
Brothel Association regards taxation as legitimation and insurance 
against prohibition as the booming state's frontier mentality recedes.

State governments, misunderstanding markets and ravenous for revenue, 
exaggerate the potential windfall from taxing legalized marijuana. 
California thinks it might reap $1.4 billion.

But Rosalie Pacula, a Rand Corp. economist, estimates that 
prohibition raises marijuana production costs at least 400 percent, 
so legalization would cause prices to fall much more than the 50 
percent assumed by the $1.4 billion estimate.

Furthermore, marijuana is a normal good in that demand for it varies 
with price.

Legalization, by drastically lowering price, will increase 
marijuana's public health costs, including mental and respiratory 
problems, and motor vehicle accidents.

States attempting to use high taxes to keep marijuana prices 
artificially high would leave a large market for much cheaper illegal 
- -- unregulated and untaxed -- marijuana.

So revenue (and law enforcement savings) would depend on the price 
falling close to the cost of production. In the 1990s, a mere $2 per 
pack difference between U.S. and Canadian cigarette prices created 
such a smuggling problem that Canada repealed a cigarette tax increase.

Suthers has multiple drug-related worries. Colorado ranks sixth in 
the nation in identity theft, two-thirds of which is driven by the 
state's $1.4 billion annual methamphetamine addiction. He is loath to 
see complete legalization of marijuana at a moment when new methods 
of cultivation are producing plants in which the active ingredient, 
THC, is "seven, eight times as concentrated" as it used to be. 
Furthermore, he was pleasantly surprised when a survey of nonusing 
young people revealed that health concerns did not explain nonuse.

The main explanation was the law: "We underestimate the number of 
people who care that something is illegal."

But they will care less as law itself loses its dignity. By mocking 
the idea of lawful behavior, legalization of medical marijuana may be 
more socially destructive than full legalization.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom