Pubdate: Wed, 05 Dec 2012
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2012 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: John Keilman
Column: Local Observer

IMPACT OF LEGAL POT NOT TOO HIGH

I got a whiff of the future the other day, and it smelled like
fertilizer.

That was the scent drifting from the doorway of a hydroponic gardening
store inmy hometown of Fort Collins, Colo. I had returned there for a
Thanksgiving visit just two weeks after the state became one of the
first in the nation to legalize the cultivation, sale and recreational
use of small amounts of marijuana. What I found was an entire
community that seemed ready for the harvest.

It wasn't just the hydroponic outlet that, amusingly enough, was
located next to a health club. Itwas the proliferation of head shops,
the clothing stores conspicuously advertising hemp wear, the news
stories about prosecutors dropping marijuana possession cases.

Most of all, it was the feeling I got that few of my former neighbors
saw the change as a big deal. Everyone I talked to about legalized pot
just shrugged. A proposal to build an on campus football stadium at
the local university was much more controversial.

Now, the Rocky Mountain state is not exactly Middle America when it
comes to cannabis. It has a highly visible, deeply rooted weed culture
that entices thousands of people to public "smoke outs" each year.
Medical marijuana dispensaries are so numerous that Denver's
alternative newspaper employs a critic to review them.

But my guess is that Colorado and Washington (the other state that
approved legalization this past month) are simply leading a trend that
is bound to spread elsewhere, including Illinois.

The signs are already here. Chicago authorities this year began to
issue tickets instead of criminal charges to those caught with small
amounts of pot, joining dozens of municipalities with similar
ordinances. The Illinois Legislature failed-barely-to approve
medical marijuana in the spring but will likely vote again soon.

And as far as public opinion goes, a nationwide Washington Post-ABC
News poll last month found that while a slight majority of Americans
do not favor legal weed, that is due mostly to the 2-to-1 opposition
of people 65 and older. The bulk of people in every other age group
supports legalization.

A state as blue as Illinois surely won't swim against that tide for
long, so it's worth imagining what life would be like if marijuana
came out of the florescent lit closet.

This involves more speculation than you might think, since no country
on earth has fully legalized pot. Even the Netherlands, home to those
groovy coffee shops, has quite a few restrictions, including bans on
the production and wholesale distribution of cannabis.

But the convincing case laid out by the authors of a recently
published book, "Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to
Know," is that things probably wouldn't change all that much.

Take law enforcement. Few people today get locked up on simple pot
possession charges, so legalization would barely dent the jail and
prison populations. It wouldn't eliminate the mayhem caused by
drug-selling street gangs, since that generally stems from more
lucrative substances such as heroin and cocaine.

Legal marijuana also wouldn't solve government budget problems. The
retail price would likely plummet once the costs associated with
smuggling go away, and if taxes grew too steep, a black market would
undoubtedly form, just as it has in areas with high cigarette taxes.

While overall marijuana use would probably rise if we could buy a few
joints at the corner store, it's hard to say how much social harm
would ensue. Co-author Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon University
researcher, said most pot aficionados light up only occasionally, and
even those who are dependent on the drug tend to manage their lives
better than people hooked on alcohol or harder substances.

The biggest potential downside, he said, is that some new users would
likely add booze, cigarettes or more extreme narcotics to their drug
diets, producing negative consequences for health and public order.
And if marijuana dealers were allowed to push their products through
advertising, look out.

"I don't look at consumers' decisions in the face of aggressively
marketed alcohol and see an entirely happy story," Caulkins said.

Still, he thinks life with legal marijuana would be more or less the
same as it is today, and based on the vibe I got in Colorado, I agree.
The drug is readily available right now- 70 percent of Illinois high
school seniors in a 2010 survey said it's easy to get-so a change in
the law won't automatically turn Muffy and Biff into Cheech and Chong.

I don't smoke pot, and I would flip out if I discovered that my kids
were doing it, but the best defense against that is to instill them
with common sense and personal responsibility. No matter what happens
with the law, that's one thing that definitely won't change.
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