Pubdate: Mon, 12 Apr 2010
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2010 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: David Sirota
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

WE'RE PAYING TOO HIGH A PRICE FOR THE WAR ON DRUGS

When choosing between frugality and security, history shows that 
America almost always selects the latter. To paraphrase President 
Kennedy, we'll pay any price and bear any burden to protect ourselves.

No doubt this was why the economic case against the Iraq invasion 
failed. To many, the war debate seemed to pose a binary question: 
debt or mushroom clouds? And when it's a scuffle between money 
arguments and security arguments (even dishonest security arguments), 
security wins every time.

Call this the Pay-Any-Price Principle - an axiom that has impacted 
all of America's wars, and now, most poignantly, its War on Drugs. 
When faced with criticism of budget-busting prosecution and 
incarceration costs, law enforcement agencies and private prison 
interests have successfully depicted their cause as a willingness to 
pay any price to jail dealers of hard narcotics.

Of course, data undermine that story line. In 2008, the FBI reported 
that 82 percent of drug arrests were for possession - not sales or 
manufacturing - and almost half of those arrests were for marijuana, 
not hard drugs.

Fortunately, these numbers are seeping into the public consciousness. 
Gallup's latest survey shows record support for marijuana 
legalization, as more Americans see the Drug War for what it really 
is: an ideological and profit-making crusade by the 
Arrest-and-Incarceration Complex against a substance that is, 
according to most physicians, less toxic than alcohol.

Considering both the public opinion shift and the facts about 
marijuana, this should be the moment that drug policy reformers drop 
their budget attacks and flip the security argument on their 
opponents - specifically, by pointing out how safety is actually 
compromised by the status quo.

The good news is that some activists are making this very case.

Recently, students at 80 colleges asked their schools to reduce 
penalties for marijuana possession so that they are no greater than 
penalties for alcohol possession. It's a request with safety in mind: 
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 
alcohol use by college kids contributes to roughly 1,700 deaths, 
600,000 injuries and 97,000 sexual assaults every year.

By contrast, "The use of marijuana itself has not been found to 
contribute to any deaths, there has never been a single fatal 
marijuana overdose in history (and) all objective research on 
marijuana has also concluded that it does not contribute to injuries, 
assaults, sexual abuse, or violent or aggressive behavior," as the 
group Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation notes.

"It's time we stop driving students to drink and let them make the 
rational, safer choice to use marijuana," said one student.

Now the bad news: Not every reformer is on message.

In California, where polls show most citizens support cannabis 
legalization, The New York Times reports that backers of a 
legalization ballot measure "will not dwell on assertions of 
marijuana's harmlessness" but "rather on (the) cold cash" pot can 
generate for depleted state coffers.

The problem is not these advocates' facts - California officials 
confirm that legal marijuana could generate more than $1 billion in 
tax revenue. The problem goes back to the Pay-Any-Price Principle.

By downplaying the argument about giving society a safer alternative 
to alcohol, California's legalization advocates are letting drug 
warriors reclaim the language of security, to the point where even 
liberal Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer's campaign now trumpets her 
opposition to the initiative on the grounds that "she shares the 
(safety) concerns of police chiefs, sheriffs and other law 
enforcement officials."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom