Pubdate: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 Source: Auburn Plainsman, The (AL Edu) Copyright: 2003 The Auburn Plainsman Contact: http://www.theplainsman.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1880 Pubdate: June 5, 2003 Author: James Diffee MARIJUANA: NOT JUST FOR GLAUCOMA, ALSO FOR GETTING HIGH Imagine an America where consuming alcohol was against the law. There would be no backyard barbecues, no cocktail parties, no clubs, no frat parties, no Homer Simpson. Millions of Americans would break the law by grabbing a beer with a buddy. Millions more would risk arrest for wining and dining a date. Of course, several illegal liquor rings would emerge, powered by basement brewers and talking black bears smuggling Labatt Blue across the border. Politicians, interested in winning votes, would appropriate millions of tax-payer dollars to an anti-alcohol campaign that would prove as ineffective and wasteful as every government initiative. State and local governments would waste even more money prosecuting the millions of otherwise law-abiding and responsible citizens who just wanted a stiff drink. Sound familiar? It should. This America existed in the 1920s, when moralists controlled the government and tried to limit freedom under the guise of positive social reform. Prohibition advocates claimed their "noble experiment" would reduce crime, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses and improve health and hygiene. The results of that experiment clearly indicate that it was a miserable failure on all counts. All prohibition did was prove that eliminating mutually beneficial exchange never works. James Diffee is editor of The Auburn Plainsman. You can reach him at 844-9021. Try telling that to the generals of our nation's noble drug war, an effort that sucks millions of dollars from taxpayers and does absolutely nothing to hinder drug use. Recently, more states are passing laws that allow the freedom to smoke marijuana for medicinal use (Massachusetts just last week), and the legislators of those states should be applauded; but medicinal marijuana is a far cry from the freedom any of-age American should have. I am not advocating the legalization of every narcotic; I do not believe crack should be unionized. What I do believe is that marijuana, less physically harmful than cigarettes and non-addictive, should be the choice of citizens 21 years or older. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, from the beginning of 1990 through 1994, 2,153,700 deaths have resulted from smoking cigarettes. The CDC said that cigarettes remain "the leading preventable cause of death in the United States." Statistics for the States' other drug of choice, alcohol, aren't much better. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, more than 100,000 people die of alcohol-related deaths each year. Many of these deaths are violent, and often take the lives of the innocent as well as the intoxicated. Not to mention the more than 32,000 Americans that die each year in hospitals due to mistreatment with widely used, legal drugs. Now, marijuana prohibitors, how many deaths are the direct result of marijuana ingestion? Not one. Obviously the argument that preventing responsible people from smoking pot somehow protects the citizenry is made invalid by laws that allow more dangerous drugs. Another thing to consider is the financial burden arresting marijuana "criminals" places on state and city governments, and the amount of money that could be raised if the same taxes placed on cigarettes and booze were placed on weed. Federal, state and local governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars arresting, convicting and imprisoning citizens for marijuana use. That is hundreds of millions of dollars that could be spent on a variety of other, bankrupt programs. Some states spend almost as much money prosecuting drug offenders as they do educating children. And weed is a cash crop. If marijuana was privatized by corporations and taxed by the federal government, millions and millions more would be brought in. Not to mention all the money that will be taken from terrorists. Morality has no place in the argument, because the government of the United States has no business legislating morality. I'm not going to bother arguing against moralist objections. In 2002 TIME magazine estimated that 12 million American's smoke marijuana regularly, and another 80 million have experimented with it. Ultimately, it isn't about morality, money, or health, it's about freedom, the freedom to choose and the freedom from being persecuted for a choice. Besides, I've heard it's fun.