Pubdate: Fri, 13 Sep 2013
Source: Daily Review (Towanda, PA)
Copyright: 2013 The Daily Review
Contact:  http://www.thedailyreview.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1015
Author: Lane Filler

AMERICA SHOULD END ITS WAR ON POT

In 1969, a Gallup poll showed 12 percent of Americans said marijuana 
should be legal in the United States.

In 2013, a man who first smoked marijuana in 1969 at the age of 21 
would turn 65 and claim his Medicare. If our hypothetical friend is 
still toking, he's probably also bringing the line at a convenience 
store to a screeching halt daily, trying in vain to claim a senior 
discount on taquitos and cheese popcorn as those behind him grow 
mutinous, then murderous.

What else happened while our farout friend aged, worked, bought a 
home, paid taxes, raised kids and, perhaps, got gently stoned before 
"Saturday Night Live"? The percentage of Americans in favor of 
legalizing the good herbs got as high as Americans themselves, 
reaching 52 this year, says a Pew Research Center study.

Pot has been much in the news of late, with a New York City mayoral 
candidate, John Liu, proposing to legalize marijuana in the city and 
a New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, getting into a fracas with a 
parent whose ill kid needs but cannot access pot. Medical marijuana 
has been legal in Jersey for three years, but the implementation has 
been painfully slow, and Christie hasn't done all he could to speed it up.

Christie's argument with a voter is certainly not news: In New Jersey 
they call that "Tuesday." But when a (sort of) legitimate mayoral 
candidate in our nation's most important city says we ought to allow 
the use of the dread weed, it ought to be big doings.

It isn't, though, because he's calling for the launch of a ship 
that's already sailed.

The war on weed, or the war on the 100 million Americans who've tried 
weed, just hasn't worked out, any more than the war on liquor from 
1919 to 1933, or attempts to stop vices like gambling and prostitution.

That realization is sinking in, and things are changing. Medical use 
is now legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia, and at times 
the medical reasoning can be pretty ... loose, along the lines of: "I 
have crippling anxiety when I run out of high-grade bud. Please treat 
me, immediately."

And more states are decriminalizing or out and out legalizing 
marijuana for admittedly nonmedical purposes: partying, relaxing and 
really, really digging into the deeper meaning underlying "Tosh 2.0."

In a strictly "land of liberty" sense, laws against marijuana were 
never justifiable. In a strictly real-world sense, they were never 
meaningfully, or at least not fairly, enforced. Unless he was dealing 
or smoking big spleefs in the middle of the street, and as long as he 
was white and not too noticeably poor, our 65-year-old farout friend 
probably never had the law come down on his habit.

What anti-marijuana laws have done is empower a criminal element, 
create probably the largest tax-evading industry in the nation, prop 
up the price of what is truly a weed above reasonable levels and, by 
leaving it unregulated, made pot more easily available to minors than 
cigarettes and beer.

As passionate as I sound, I haven't had a dog in this fight for 
decades. Any time I used intoxicants of any kind, I turned up 
thousands of miles from home, in a cell, charged with lewd and 
lascivious behavior, disorderly conduct and, once, improper 
transportation of a water buffalo across state lines. Twenty years of 
that was as much fun as I could stand.

But I know we can't win a "war" against a pastime that 52 percent of 
Americans support legalizing. It's impossible to succeed. It's immoral to try.

Once the hippies turned into the AARPs, the war on marijuana was 
over. Even for die-hard anti-pot people, continuing this fight makes 
about as much sense as, well, "Tosh 2.0" does to a sober viewer.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom