Lighten Our Prison Load: Decriminalize Marijuana

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Slowly, grudgingly, the conversion process goes on. One of these days, America is going to legalize -- more exactly, decriminalize -- narcotic drugs.

Even conservatives are coming around. Not because they'd like to "use." Their worst fear is for children and grandchildren: that the kids will be tempted by drug pushers in high school or even elementary school.

That revolting commerce certainly continues to go on, no matter the "war on drugs." There is just too much money in it. The economic incentives are too rich.

The question is, are youngsters likelier to be made into addicts by the criminal trade, with its big-money goals and zero scruples -- or by legal merchants as regulated as liquor stores and pharmacies?

Recently, Los Angeles author Rita Lowenthal spoke at the South Side's Joseph-Beth Booksellers about one life destroyed by drug addiction: her son's.

He had started shooting ****** at age 12 or 13, and was not a "bad" boy but bright, ambitious and musically talented. A quarter-century later, when an overdose killed him at age 37, he had compiled a career of overdosing his parents on repeated anguish, arrests, legal bills, and hospital and court visits.

Lowenthal was asked if legalization wouldn't have been better.

"Absolutely," she said. She couldn't say about *******, crack or other substances that people destroy themselves with. But ****** or methadone, she felt sure, could be controlled by doctors and drug store prescriptions at reasonable cost without repeated, tormenting exposures to the criminal underworld.

No doubt, there's another side to the issue and it is hugely authoritative.

All levels of our government pursue the drug war. Police and border forces, bureaucracies, politicians, medical and psychological wards, advertising budgets and public opinion are aboard. The stakes in pursing this "war" worldwide are multibillion, probably trillion.

The economics of drug law enforcement are staggering. Narcotic substances themselves are maddeningly cheap and plentiful: poppy flowers, coca leaves, marijuana shrubs and the like. But they all inflate enormously by the time they reach the using end, mostly because they're illegal. This is 1920 liquor Prohibition all over again and worse.

Look at crime alone. Addicts in a state of craving rob and kill. Gangs and street violence ruin neighborhoods. Property values don't have a chance. Neither do teenage boys in the worst of career training: crime. Drug cartels corrupt entire countries, prevent general prospering. U.S. prisons are filled. The economic ripples build up to tsunamis.

So the question comes back: Would legalizing encourage more use? Or less?

Some favor decriminalizing only marijuana, a relatively nonaddictive "high." This might be enough to satisfy most users and empty many prison cells. It seems worth a try -- if federal law permitted. And it should. It's time.

Source: Tribune Review (Pittsburgh, PA)
Copyright: 2007 Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
Contact: opinion@tribweb.com
Website: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review