Pubdate: Wed, 24 Oct 2012
Source: Arkansas Times (Little Rock, AR)
Copyright: 2012 Arkansas Times Inc.
Contact:  http://www.arktimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/583
Author: Mara Leveritt

A MOM WHO INHALED

Family Council president Jerry Cox opposes the ballot measure to 
legalize medical marijuana. "It's a family values issue," he said. 
So, let's talk medicine, marijuana - and, especially, family values.

I began suffering undiagnosed leg pain in childhood. At 17, my 
doctor's best advice was to take aspirin until my ears started 
ringing. I married, had two children, and started smoking marijuana 
when I returned to college in my 20s. To my surprise, the leg pain abated.

I continued to smoke for almost 25 years, roughly a joint a day. As I 
never smoked in secret, I'm betting I've got a perspective on 
marijuana and family values that Mr. Cox does not.

In our family, marijuana was treated as something like wine. I 
appreciated it as a spiritual, medicinal and occasional social 
blessing. It was not for children. It was to be used in moderation, 
not abused. From an early age, my daughter and son understood that 
there was risk in smoking marijuana, but that the risk arose not from 
the plant, but from the laws that made it illegal.

I even grew a few plants and admired them all the more. But in 1996, 
when I began writing my first book about the criminal justice system, 
I decided the legal risks were too great. I quit marijuana. Cold 
turkey. No problem. Well, almost ...

As a consequence of quitting, my old leg pain came back. I now take 
three prescription drugs at a cost, after insurance, of more than 
$300 per month. But hey! They're legal.

So that's my criminal saga. What kind of example did it set for my 
children? I'll say an honest one. It was not hypocritical, as our 
"war on drugs" has been.

In our house, there was truth about drugs. We were serious but not 
hysterical. We used no broad brushes. Drugs, like everything from 
mushrooms to motorcycles, can range from safe to deadly. It depends 
how they are used. I felt I could protect my children more with 
candor than by serving them more of the rubbish our state and federal 
drug czars have been dishing out for years.

My children saw me in many lights - some critical, I am sure. But 
they never saw me gripped by "reefer madness." We ate meals together, 
read, worked hard and laughed often. They saw me pay bills, care for 
pets and pick up litter. They knew I was a criminal, but not much of one.

And they turned out just fine. My daughter majored in philosophy and 
became a teacher. My son's a linguist and a lieutenant colonel. We 
remain very close. Neither of them smokes.

Sixteen years ago, when I gave up marijuana, I acknowledged my 
law-breaking past in a column for the Arkansas Times. I pointed out 
that I'd been working as a reporter the whole time I'd smoked. 
Whatever my deficiencies, my brain was not obviously fried. Just from 
a taxpayer point of view, I asked, wasn't it better that I was 
working and not prosecuted, imprisoned and then monitored on parole?

All the same, I knew that I'd been lucky. In my years as a reporter, 
I'd come across many, many others, no more wicked than I, who were 
languishing behind bars. And I'd heard all the arguments. It was not 
so much the users, but that shady world of the growers and dealers 
that made marijuana so dangerous.

OK. I agree. But who makes that world so shady? It's our era's 
Prohibitionists, sure as Capone shot up Chicago. The well-meaning 
people who criminalized marijuana created a needless but lucrative 
black market. By banning marijuana, the Prohibitionists made it dangerous.

Worse, they assaulted our most fundamental "family values." Because 
marijuana is illegal, thousands of moms and dads have been yanked out 
of families and sent to prison. Kids have been sent to foster homes. 
Parents - released, but with a record - have had to struggle to find 
work to support their fractured families.

These are the "values" we've been practicing for decades - with 
heartbreaking results. Our laws are not working. They are not keeping 
marijuana out of communities. They can't even keep it out of prisons. 
What our laws are doing instead is making communities more 
crime-ridden, families more broken, children poorer and more cynical 
of government.

Nobody believes the weary lies anymore about how dangerous this 
ever-newer, "more potent" marijuana is. To the contrary, many believe 
that marijuana may, in fact, be beneficial in ways that other 
medicines are not. Count me among those.

Demonizing marijuana is like demonizing beer. I'm sure that, like 
beer, marijuana will someday be legal. Meantime, why deny its comfort 
to those it might relieve? Where's the value in that?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom