Copyright: 2002 Santa Barbara News-Press
Contact: sbnpedit@newspress.com
Website: http://www.newspress.com/

TAKING THE CRIME OUT OF CANNABIS

America's laws punishing the possession of marijuana for personal use do more harm than good.

Students at UCSB and other universities across the country can attest that young people too often bear an uneven burden from this preoccupation with prosecuting such offenses. Congress reached another low point in drug policy last summer when lawmakers voted to deny federal financial aid to college students with recent drug convictions.

Hopes and ambitions of young people are derailed or even extinguished. Prosecutions for recreational use of drugs of all sorts continue to pack prisons beyond capacity.

But it is marijuana that best demonstrates the ill-rationality of federal policy makers.

Take the medical use of marijuana by patients who have physician approval. Voters in California and numerous other Western states have gone to the ballot box to legalize it. But federal drug officials and Congress refuse to acknowledge the government's own studies that demonstrate how marijuana helps ease the suffering of cancer victims and other seriously ill patients.

The federal government continues to list marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule 1 drug, a classification for drugs with "no acceptable medical benefits."

Not even cocaine is on Schedule 1.

This hypocrisy over medical marijuana shows how hard it will be to loosen the laws for other personal uses of cannabis. But it's high time to begin discussions about decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of the plant and giving people the right to decide what's best for their own bodies.

We sympathize with parents who worry that lightening marijuana penalties would send a wrong signal to young people about drug use. But parents can counter that by counseling their children just as parents do about alcohol. Leave the government out of it.

But beginning such a debate about marijuana laws will take political courage -- a quality that's become a casualty of this country's all-consuming war on drugs. Leadership will have to come from the electorate and overseas where more realistic attitudes about marijuana continue to emerge.

So we welcome news from Britain that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government will relax drug laws so users of small amounts of marijuana will no longer face arrest.

Tomorrow we'll examine how Britain provides a model for the United States to follow.

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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom