LEGALIZE POT, FORMER SAN JOSE POLICE CHIEF SAYS

California voters have a chance on this November's ballot to bring
common sense to law enforcement by legalizing marijuana for adults.
As San Jose's retired chief of police and a cop with 35 years
experience on the front lines in the war on marijuana, I'm voting yes.

I've seen the prohibition's terrible impact at close range.

Like an increasing number of law enforcers, I have learned that most
bad things about marijuana - especially the violence made inevitable
by an obscenely profitable black market - are caused by the
prohibition, not by the plant. Legal marijuana is long overdue, but
leading up to November, wrongheaded opponents will implore
Californians with the same old mistaken arguments to stay the course.
Prohibition advocates will promote fear, and they will ignore the
vast bulk of law enforcement and medical experience on marijuana.
People should not be fooled by cannabis opponents' appeal to
prejudices and emotions when they argue:

. Regulating cannabis will result in an explosion of use by young people.

On the contrary, pot smoking may decrease. Experience and research
show that the United States has among the world's harshest marijuana
laws, yet our consumption rate leads the world and is twice that of
the Netherlands, where cannabis sales to adults have been allowed for
decades. Prohibition doesn't keep marijuana away from young people.
Annual U.S. government surveys consistently show that more than 80
percent of teenagers say that marijuana is "easy" or "very easy" to
obtain. In a recent study from Columbia University, teenagers said it
is easier to get illegal marijuana than age-regulated alcohol. Under
today's laws, pot-dealing criminals getting rich on marijuana
Prohibition don't ask for ID, but licensed dealers selling alcohol do.

. Legalizing marijuana will just add one more harmful legal substance
to the mix.

Marijuana is already in the mix. No one can dispute that marijuana
already is widely available. At least 1 in 10 Californians consumed
it in the past year, despite expensive government efforts. The
November ballot's Proposition 19: The Regulate, Control and Tax
Cannabis Act of 2010 acknowledges this reality and enables us to
manage the cannabis market. Furthermore, taxing legal cannabis sales
will provide steady funding for local governments that may help avoid
layoffs of police and teachers.

. Drug gangs will keep selling marijuana even under legalization.

Silly. Who would buy pot on dangerous streets if they could get it at
regulated stores without unsafe impurities? Al Capone and his rivals
made machine-gun battles a staple of 1920s city street life when they
fought to control the illegal alcohol market. No one today shoots up
the local neighborhood to compete in the beer market. The federal
Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that Mexican cartels derive
more than 60 percent of their profits from marijuana. How much did
the cartels make last year dealing in Budweiser, Corona or Dos Equis?
Legalization would seriously cripple their operations. With more than
20,000 people in Mexico killed in the past three years in drug turf
battles, which are spreading north of the border, undercutting the
cartels is an urgent priority for both Mexicans' and Americans' safety.

. More people will drive stoned and will go to work high.

The initiative makes clear that driving while impaired will remain
illegal and punishable. Plus, after we end prohibition, law enforcers
like me will no longer be distracted making small-time busts.
Communities aren't terrified by pot smokers. When we stop wasting
resources on processing hundreds of thousands of low-level possession
cases, we'll be able to focus on keeping impaired drivers off the
road, to concentrate on violent crime and on making people feel they
and their children are safe from random gang and drug-related
shootings. At work, employers will retain their rights to fire
employees whose drug or alcohol use affects their productivity.

The same professional politicians who recklessly caused huge budget
deficits predictably are taking an irresponsible position of opposing
the "evil" of cannabis legalization, just as they opposed California
voters' decision a decade ago to legalize medical marijuana. The
California Police Chiefs Association, of which I have been a member
for 34 years, is also in opposition. Personally, I have never even
smoked a cigarette, let alone taken a hit from a bong, and while I
have great respect for the police chiefs, I wouldn't want to live in
a country where it is a crime to behave contrary to the way cops
think we should.

That perhaps brings up the most significant and least considered cost
of criminalizing marijuana - turning people into criminals for
behavior of which we disapprove, even though it doesn't take others'
property or endanger their safety. It is worth remembering that our
last three presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama,
would have been stigmatized for life and never would have become
presidents if they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and
been busted for pot during their reckless youthful days. Countless
other Americans weren't so lucky. California voters have an
opportunity in November to return reason to our state by
decriminalizing adult use of marijuana.