SPEAKOUT: TIME HAS COME TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

The Rocky Mountain News editorializes that the city of Denver must
enforce the state pot law in the wake of the repeal of the city
ordinance by voters, as if some profound prinicple were at stake here
("City must enforce state pot law," Nov. 7). In fact, the marijuana
laws of Colorado and the United States are a profound negation of
American principle.

First, the marijuana laws are unconstitutional. The Supreme Court
denied Woodrow Wilson's attempt to extend wartime prohibition of
alcohol to the post-World War I era, necessitating the 18th
Amendment, later wisely repealed.

Where is the constitutional amendment enabling marijuana prohibition?

Next, the laws were founded and steeped in racism against Mexicans
and African-Americans. A perusal of the Congressional Record for 1939
is educational in this regard, albeit shocking to modern sensibilities.

Third, the laws make no sense. Although Mayor John Hickenlooper frets
about marijuana as a "gateway drug," all reputable research suggests
that much more easily obtainable cigarettes and alcohol are the
"gateway drugs" of America's youth. Shall we lock up Hickenlooper
himself in a cell with the Coors family?

Finally, the entire drug panic in American life is like a national
mental illness. The fanatical element of this vice crusade was
instituted by two presidents (Nixon and Reagan) in whose
adminstrations the CIA undisputably engaged in massive drug
smuggling. This crusade has effectively elevated the laws of
contraband above the laws of theft and murder; has institutionalized
the suborning of perjury in the federal prosecutorial organs; has
chipped away at several items of the Bill of Rights such as the
Fourth Amendment; has corrupted the intelligence organs of the world
with a wash of easy drug money; has erected narcocracies and terror
in parts of Latin America and Asia; all without making much of a dent
in consumption.

What sort of inhumanity spawns the belief that the vice of a drug
habit can be stemmed by draconian law enforcement? Or that such a
practice enhances the safety or comity of our civilization? The
religious prohibition of alcohol in the Muslim world has been
vigorously enforced since the seventh century, yet millions of
Muslims still drink: Is that a model for America? Better to take the
money and erect Betty Ford clinics for the poor, and to frown on the
vice through social disapprobation, as we do with other vices.

Smoking pot is indeed a vice. It can sap the will and damage the
lungs. But overall, marijuana is indeed safer than alcohol, as all
but the purchased science of the prohibitionists recognizes.

The acrid smell of marijuana smoke pervades modern American culture.
Petty vice will always be with us. Pot just ain't worth the fanatical
and hopeless effort to extirpate it. It's time to give up the crusade
and legalize marijuana.

Jack Woehr has three times been on the ballot for public office in
Colorado on a platform of ending the war on drugs.