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Reefer saneness at Justice Dept.
Daytona Beach News-Journal
Reefer saneness at Justice Dept.
Edition: N-J Final
Section: Section A
Memo: NJ Editorial
Zero tolerance for marijuana use was itself a policy more stoned than the imaginary problem it targeted. It had federal prosecutors squandering resources and attention even on medical- marijuana distributors in more than a dozen states that have legalized such use. The policy, stepped up during the Bush administration, cost billions, did nothing to deter marijuana use (it increased this decade) and made life needlessly more painful for cancer, glaucoma and AIDS patients who use marijuana to reduce suffering and nausea.
That zero-tolerance policy died last week. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration would no longer prosecute medical- marijuana distributors or users. Desirable as that additional step would be, the administration isn't legalizing marijuana use, but it will only focus on medical- marijuana distributors investigations reveal to be fronts for broader drug operations.
California 13 years ago became the first state to legalize marijuana for medical uses. But when state and federal law clash, federal law prevails. And federal law forbids any use of marijuana. Federal prosecutions were conducted under that law, which the Supreme Court upheld in 2005. Holder can't wipe out federal law. But he can choose not to enforce it, which amounts to the same thing (as long as a like-minded attorney general occupies the office). The Justice Department's policy reversal will have an immediate impact in the 13 states where medical marijuana is legal and may inspire additional relaxation of marijuana laws beyond those states. Chances for that in Florida appear slim.
Florida is going backward in marijuana policy. Last year Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law a measure that lumps drug dealers and small-time users into the same category by declaring that anyone caught with as few as 25 marijuana plants is a dealer (the federal threshold for the dealer designation is 100 plants). Florida's marijuana-possession law is among the harshest in the country. There is no medical- marijuana exception in Florida.
Prohibiting marijuana's growth and use encourages crime, encourages corruption in law enforcement, drives up the drug's price, makes it more attractive to those who like to rebel and break rules, and diverts billions of dollars in court and incarceration costs. Hundreds of thousands of lives are wrecked every year as men and women count days in prison or on probation instead of at work and in their families.
Marijuana, for medical uses or not, should be legalized, regulated and taxed. In Florida, it would have the double benefit of providing relief to sufferers of cancer and other illnesses while providing the state much-needed revenue -- and saving it millions in dollars no longer going up in the smoke of marijuana prosecutions and superstitions.
(Copyright 2009, The News-Journal Corporation)
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 "The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining to an understanding of compassion" SOCRATES, 470-399 BC 
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