Pubdate: Sun, 09 Dec 2012 Source: Courier-Journal, The (Louisville, KY) Copyright: 2012 The Courier-Journal Contact: http://www.courier-journal.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/97 Author: John Krull Note: John Krull is director of Franklin College's Pulliam School of Journalism and executive editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. INDIANA'S WAR ON POT IS FAILING; NEW MARIJUANA POLICY NEEDED INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana seems to be experiencing a fresh outbreak of reefer madness. And it may be just the time for it. The most recent symptom came when the head of the Indiana State Police testified before members of the State Budget Committee. State Police Superintendent Paul Whitesell told the panel that he would legalize marijuana in Indiana if the decision were left to him. "My thought is, toward the zenith of my career, it is here. It is going to stay," Whitesell said of pot. "That's an awful lot of victimization that goes with it. "If it were up to me, I do believe I would legalize it and tax it - particularly in sight of the fact that several other states have now." Whitesell's pronouncement - which his press officer was quick to call philosophic musing, not a call to action - came on the heels of voters in Colorado and Washington opting to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. That, in turn, prompted several Indiana lawmakers to say they would consider making Indiana's marijuana laws less restrictive. Doubtless, there are going to be people who will spin Whitesell's statement and the legislators' willingness to consider alternatives to current marijuana laws as a softening on crime. That's not how I see it. Through what has turned out to be a decades-long war on drugs, we too often have taken extended furloughs from reality. And the reality is that much of what we have been doing just has not worked. We now have more of our people behind bars than any other industrialized nation in the world - including many totalitarian or police states. Every person we imprison costs us between $40,000 and $80,000 per year, depending upon the location of the prison and the level of security required. If the person we lock up was gainfully employed when he or she was caught with marijuana, we also lose that person's productivity and contributions to our local, state and federal tax structures - so the actual cost of incarceration may be much higher. Just as troubling, our preoccupation with banning marijuana has warped our legal system. There are many places in this country where a person will serve more time behind bars for getting caught with a pound of marijuana than he or she will for killing another human being. Even worse, we have established a huge black market economy that creates a profit motive for many of our young people to terrorize and kill each other. To sum things up, we as a nation have crafted a national policy on marijuana that depletes our treasury, robs us of the contributions of many of our citizens and has turned parts of our country into the equivalent of free-fire zones. No wonder Whitesell and some lawmakers think it might be wise to go another way. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a solution to America's drug problem. I also will admit that drug consumption in this country is a huge problem - that drugs destroy lives every day, every hour, every minute. But the first step toward solving a problem involves acknowledging it - - and acknowledging failure. That's what the Indiana State Police superintendent and several Indiana lawmakers are doing. They're not saying that they approve of marijuana consumption. What they are saying is that the way we have been using the law to discourage people from using marijuana has not worked. The cure has been at least as bad as the disease. Whitesell and the lawmakers are right. Our approach to marijuana hasn't worked. When sane people encounter failure on a scale this spectacular, they search for another solution. That is what we Hoosiers should do. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom