We have an unnecessary prohibition on marijuana. Just ask any policeman whether he/she would rather encounter someone stoned or drunk. Just ask any physician which drug causes more problems for their patients.

Somehow we have lumped marijuana into a general category of which it does not have membership. Crack cocaine causes many problems. It is very different from marijuana.

Marijuana is not harmless. Many users lose motivation for success. Smoking marijuana can cause pulmonary damage over time. But – and this is the key I think – the damage is minor compared to alcohol.

The case for medical marijuana is even more compelling. Marijuana does seem to help many patients. It can decrease pain, nausea and increase appetite. Many patients find it a useful adjunct to their therapeutic regimens.

As a social libertarian, all laws against marijuana astonish me. We have criminalized a behavior with modest harm, and done harm to many citizens. Our laws create distrust in most adolescents and young adults, because they understand the issue. They know peers who have been “busted” for marijuana.

The money we spend trying enforce these stupid laws should rather be used to treat more serious drug problems – cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, alcohol, and even tobacco!!!!

William Buckley, perhaps the father of the conservative renaissance in this country, speaks in on this issue – FREE WEEDS

Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.

The laws concerning marijuana aren’t exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder. But that argument, to quote myself, is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating.

General rules based on individual victims are unwise. And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend. If all our laws were paradigmatic, imagine what we would do to anyone caught lighting a cigarette, or drinking a beer. Or — exulting in life in the paradigm — committing adultery. Send them all to Guantanamo?

Legal practices should be informed by realities. These are enlightening in the matter of marijuana. There are approximately 700,000 marijuana-related arrests made very year. Most of these — 87 percent — involve nothing more than mere possession of small amounts of marijuana. This exercise in scrupulosity costs us $10 billion to $15 billion per year in direct expenditures alone. Most transgressors caught using marijuana aren’t packed away to jail, but some are, and in Alabama, if you are convicted three times of marijuana possession, they’ll lock you up for 15 years to life. Professor Ethan Nadelmann, of the Drug Policy Alliance, writing in National Review, estimates at 100,000 the number of Americans currently behind bars for one or another marijuana offense.

I do not believe this is a conservative/liberal issue. It should be a commonsense issue. However, Buckley points out in the next paragraph:

What we face is the politician’s fear of endorsing any change in existing marijuana laws. You can imagine what a call for reform in those laws would do to an upward mobile political figure. Gary Johnson, as governor of New Mexico, came out in favor of legalization — and went on to private life. George Shultz, former secretary of state, long ago called for legalization, but he was not running for office, and at his age, and with his distinctions, he is immune to slurred charges of indifference to the fate of children and humankind. But Kurt Schmoke, as mayor of Baltimore, did it, and survived a re-election challenge.

But the stodgy inertia most politicians feel is up against a creeping reality. It is that marijuana for medical relief is a movement that is attracting voters who are pretty assertive on the subject. Every state ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana has been approved, often by wide margins.

We need some courage here. We need politicians to do the right thing. But then we could use some flying pigs.

Related posts:

1. Arguing for marijuana legalization
2. Supreme Court to address medical marijuana
3. Drug laws and the mayor
4. NY Times opines on the medical marijuana debate
5. Common sense on drugs

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