Pubdate: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 Source: Greensboro News & Record (NC) Copyright: 1999 Greensboro News & Record, Inc. Contact: http://www.greensboro.com/ Author: Edward Cone POT BANS HAVE GOT TO GO "Legalize it," sang reggae star Peter Tosh about marijuana in his hit dope-smoking anthem of the same name, "don't criticize it." With all due respect to the late Mr. Tosh, we should probably be doing some of both. It's hard to argue in favor of legalizing a substance that makes people stupid(er) and probably causes cancer as well, but it's even harder to support the ridiculous marijuana laws now on the books. The most recent reminder that U.S. marijuana laws are wrong came last week with the release of a comprehensive study on the plant's medical uses. The study, commissioned by the hard-line National Office on Drug Control Policy, concluded that people who suffer otherwise untreatable pain and nausea due to illness should be allowed to use marijuana to alleviate their symptoms and the side-effects of chemotherapy. The feds, unmoved by their own report, will continue to deny this small measure of peace to people with cancer, AIDS and other diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Withholding pain relief to prop up failed policies is barbaric, but our backwards stance on medical marijuana is just part of the national drug problem. Even as state after state votes to legalize prescription pot, hyper-strict federal drug laws that treat marijuana as severely as cocaine and heroin continue to fill American prisons with nonviolent offenders. No less an authority than Princeton professor John J. DiIulio Jr., the influential conservative, wrote recently that people in prison for drug-only offenses should be released. DiIulio recommends mandatory treatment for drug offenders, an approach that recognizes drug use as a health issue, not a criminal one. Beyond the incarceration epidemic, so-called zero tolerance policies for marijuana help legitimize the police state tactics common to the "war on drugs," which has taken on too many of the trappings of real war. Again, the cure is worse than the problem. Combat-equipped police units empowered to seize property are a graver threat to the public interest than, say, a chance encounter with Shaggy from Scooby Doo. And overstating the dangers of pot can only undermine the credibility of the public health campaign against more lethal and addictive drugs. The Drug Control Policy study says marijuana is not a "gateway drug" that leads to harder narcotics (and of course the whole idea of its gateway role is a tacit acknowledgment that marijuana is different from hard drugs), but you've got to wonder if crying wolf on marijuana doesn't encourage people to experiment with other stuff. Kids who discover that marijuana is by many measures less frightening than a common, legal drug like alcohol are likely to question what the government is saying about other substances. Society has to draw the line somewhere and ban substances that impose an unbearable social cost. Heroin and cocaine are clearly too dangerous to legalize, Prozac is available via prescription (and freely prescribed), a child can buy caffeine. This nation went one substance too far when we outlawed alcohol during Prohibition, but we recognized that mistake and fixed it. We're still working on our approach to tobacco, with a growing consensus that cigarette companies shouldn't be allowed to lie about the health effects of their products and a concurrent libertarian sense that people should at some point be allowed to make their own mistakes. Marijuana falls closer to the acceptable side of the line than current laws acknowledge. Certainly there are arguments to be made against selling it commercially, but we need at least to make it available for medical use and to stop criminalizing the possession of small amounts. There are too many laws on the books aimed at protecting us from ourselves, and the laws concerning marijuana are doing us more harm than good. - --- MAP posted-by: Patrick Henry