Pubdate: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 Source: Appeal-Democrat (Marysville, CA) Copyright: 2014 Appeal-Democrat Contact: http://www.appeal-democrat.com/sections/services/forms/editorletter.php Website: http://www.appeal-democrat.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1343 Authors: Matt Pearce and Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times (MCT) LEGALIZING MARIJUANA: U.S. SEEING A PROFOUND SHIFT More than a third of adults have smoked it - including the last three presidents. Dozens of songs and movies have been made about it. Marijuana is no longer whispered about, nor hidden in back rooms and basements. It has come into the open in American life despite decades of prohibition and laws treating the drug as more dangerous than meth and cocaine. When The New York Times' editorial board called this weekend for the U.S. government to end its ban on weed - and let states decide how to regulate it - the newspaper reflected what a majority of Americans have told pollsters: Marijuana should be legal. The status quo, according to advocates and even the president, has resulted in the disproportionate arrests of minorities and the poor. "The social costs of the marijuana laws are vast," the editorial said. "There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, according to FBI figures, compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives. Even worse, the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals." These are not new arguments. But this time they come from The New York Times, not High Times. Support for marijuana legalization has grown so rapidly within the last decade, and especially within the last two years, that some advocates and pollsters have compared it with the sudden collapse of opposition to same-sex marriage as a culture-redefining event. Gallup has found more popular support for legalizing marijuana than for legalizing same-sex marriage. In Gallup's most recent survey on the issue, in 2013, 58 percent of respondents said marijuana should be legal - up from 46 percent a year earlier and 31 percent in the early 2000s. This spring, 55 percent said gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry. When Colorado passed a ballot measure in 2012 legalizing recreational marijuana, more residents voted for legal weed than for President Barack Obama (who carried the state). Washington state's legalization effort also passed handily. Yet through a combination of ballot measures, legislative action and judicial action, same-sex marriage has found far more success across the U.S., in a campaign supporters liken to the civil rights movement. For marijuana, a better historical comparison is Prohibition - when alcohol was banned in the early 20th century. Public officials have moved more slowly on pot, in many cases taking incremental steps like decriminalizing possession of small amounts and legalizing the drug for medicinal use. Taboos have slowly faded. Former President Bill Clinton confessed to smoking marijuana but famously claimed that he "didn't inhale." George W. Bush told a friend in a recorded conversation that he didn't want to answer questions about past marijuana use because "I don't want some little kid doing what I tried." Obama was bolder, declaring before he was elected, "Of course I inhaled - that was the point!" In a New Yorker interview published in January, Obama said, "I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol." But he worried legalizing marijuana would create a slippery slope for legalizing more dangerous drugs. The American Medical Association, while calling for more clinical testing, has expressed skepticism that medicinal marijuana meets federal safety standards for prescriptions. The American Psychiatric Association's most recent policy statement says, "There is no current scientific evidence that marijuana is in any way beneficial for the treatment of any psychiatric disorder." Dissenters also worry that creating a legal marijuana industry would simply be the next Big Tobacco, with legalization bringing higher rates of addiction and mental health problems. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom