Pubdate: Sat, 10 Mar 2012
Source: Daily Press (Newport News,VA)
Copyright: 2012 The Daily Press
Contact:  http://www.dailypress.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/585
Author: Tamara Dietrich

PAT ROBERTSON, A HERO TO HIPPIES

Televangelist Pat Robertson has never been my go-to guy for proof that
there is a God, but last week he made me believe in miracles.

The Virginia Beach-based Southern Baptist and public scold announced
we should stop criminalizing marijuana and treat it like beverage
alcohol because our endless war on drugs is bankrupting us,
spiritually and financially.

"We here in America make up 5 percent of the world's population, but
we make up 25 percent of jailed prisoners," Robertson said on a recent
broadcast of The 700 Club.

"I became sort of a hero of the hippie culture, I guess, when I said I
think we ought to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. I think
it's just shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison
and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had
possession of a very small amount of controlled substance. The whole
thing is crazy."

Hallelujah - he had me at "hero of the hippie culture."

Tragically, he did undercut his credibility when he then blamed
liberals for the country's skyrocketing incarceration rate.

"Every time the liberals pass a bill - I don't care what it involves -
they stick criminal sanctions on it," Robertson clucked. "They don't
feel there is any way people are going to keep a law unless they can
put them in jail."

Liberals? Putting people in jail? For pot? Holy rollers - what is this
man smoking?

I called The 700 Club headquarters to ask, but was only able to leave
a message, which he didn't return. For now, I choose to believe he
suffered a synaptic lapse and his 81-year-old brain inadvertently
transposed "liberals" for "conservatives."

Robertson expanded on his marijuana position to The New York Times a
few days after that broadcast:

"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage
alcohol. ...This war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."

For Neill Franklin, Robertson's conversion could be a blessing.
Franklin is a retired narcotics cop and executive director of LEAP, or
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which seeks to legalize
marijuana, for starters.

"The Christian population is finally seeing that this is a human
rights issue with the number of people we're putting in prison for
nonviolent (drug offenses)," Franklin said in a phone interview Friday
from Baltimore. "If you ... follow the teachings of Jesus Christ,
you'll recognize immediately that this is immoral, what we're doing."

What we're doing is incarcerating 2.5 million fellow Americans - 62
percent of them for "soft" or nonviolent drug offenses. As one critic
said, "We punish people we're not afraid of, but just mad at."

And we're paying for it, in every sense.

Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron claims in a recent report that
legalizing drugs would save about $41.3 billion a year on enforcement.
Of that, $25.7 billion would go to state and local governments, the
rest to the federal government. Legalizing marijuana alone would save
nearly $9 billion.

And if those drugs were taxed at rates comparable to alcohol and
tobacco, Miron writes, it would yield $46.7 billion annually - $8.7
billion from marijuana.

But to Franklin - and, yes, to Robertson - the money is secondary. Try
putting a price tag on the lives and entire families devastated, the
futures wasted, because we lock people up for possession.

If we only invested in treatment and education instead of throwing tax
dollars down the prison rat hole, we'd have a safer, saner and more
productive society. Other countries have proven this.

We'd also quell the violence of the illegal marketplace - up to 70
percent of the profit for illegal drug cartels in Latin America comes
from pot, Franklin notes.

As for the argument that legalizing pot or other drugs would only
increase the population of addicts, he says, the addiction rate for
drugs has held fairly steady at 1.3 percent of the population since
the late 1800s.

Franklin says he's reaching out to Robertson about taking up the cause
more publicly.

"By him openly having this conversation on his show, he's already put
himself there," Franklin says. "And now he has a responsibility to
follow up."

Robertson told the Times he supports efforts in Colorado and
Washington to decriminalize pot, but won't campaign for the movement.

"I'm not a crusader," Robertson demurred.

Not a crusader? No, seriously, what has this man been smoking?
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MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.