ROBERT DEWITT: Marijuana legalization is not a bright idea

I know this is bound to shock you, but there is some Reefer Madness in Alabama. This latest epidemic is courtesy of Robert DeWitt, writing in the Tuscaloosa News.

(Tuscaloosa News) America’s drug laws sprang from the social problems caused by unregulated drug sales. Powerful narcotics like cocaine and heroin were sold over the counter during the 19th century and addiction became a nationwide problem. Enforcement usually involved society’s fringe elements or dregs until the 1960s counter-culture movement made pot and LSD its mascots.

That’s most certainly not true.  In the 19th century you could buy any drug you wanted and there was about 1% of the population who had an addiction problem.  Today all those drugs will get you thrown in jail and we have about 1% of the population with an addiction problem.

The most recent shift in attitudes seems to me as much a product of weariness with the war on drugs. Federal state and local agencies pour billions into enforcement and the problem seems to grow every year. The taxpayers bear the burden for a growing prison population and the attitudes of the people convicted never seem to change. It seems like an exercise in futility.

I have nothing to gain from the legalization of drugs. I have no desire to venture beyond the bounds of 12-ounce cans of American-style lager and the occasional gin and tonic, margarita or bloody mary.

In other words, you don’t care about marijuana legalization because your choice of a much more dangerous drug is already legal.

I smoked pot six to eight times in my college days and never liked it. It always left me with an unpleasantly disconnected feeling that I compared to being dipped in candle wax. So I can’t in any way empathize with people who want to smoke legal marijuana.

Because when you drink your lager, gin, tequila, and vodka, nobody breaks down your door, shoots your dogs, takes away your children, locks you in a cage, fires you from your job, requires you to pee in a cup, and charges you with a crime that, once convicted, will act as a barrier to most of your educational and career goals.  I agree; you just can’t empathize with pot smokers because your more dangerous drug is legal.

It’s when I think like a father that drugs bother me. For anybody with any sort of moral grounding, ‘it’s against the law’ is a powerful argument. And I want any ammunition I can get to argue against my son and daughter using drugs.

Because without that “It’s against the law” argument, you don’t really have any effective way of telling my children they shouldn’t use marijuana or drugs.  You must be terrible at gaining your kids’ respect and trust with an honest conversation about marijuana.  How are you ever going to convince them not to drink alcohol when it’s so doggone legal!  (Well, I suppose you could tell them they are under legal age, but then if marijuana was legal you’d have that same legal age argument…)

I’ve watched one person I know pass many a sleepless night worrying about a son with a methamphetamine problem, and I never want to experience what he’s gone through. Using crack, meth and other drugs has led people to sell their children and murder their parents. That’s about as anti-social as you can get.

Wow, what a compelling set of arguments to make to your children against using crack, meth, and other drugs.  Now what does this have to do with marijuana?

They say it’s not addictive but I’ve watched it consume people’s lives. They smoke pot, they hang out with people who smoke pot and they talk to each other about smoking pot.

Uh, Robert, where did you drink your last “American-style lager, occasional gin and tonic, margarita or bloody mary”?  Were you hanging out with people who drink at the time?  Did any of you talk about your favorite microbrews or how strong the drink was mixed?

And that’s about all they’re good for. It saps all ambition for anything but their next hit.  I haven’t spent the last 18 years raising children to watch either pot smoking lethargy or life-destroying addiction ruin their potential or their lives.

Yes, we wouldn’t want them to become lethargic slackers like Michael Phelps, Santonio Holmes, Plaxico Burress, Toby Grear, Sir Richard Branson, Carl Sagan, Willie Nelson, Sir Paul McCartney, President Obama, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, George Bush, or most of the NBA.

Police do enforce marijuana laws and some of the jail space is devoted to marijuana users and dealers. Theoretically, if marijuana makes up 40 percent of drug arrests and incarcerations, law enforcement and corrections should be able to cut their drug enforcement budgets and personnel by 40 percent once marijuana is legalized.

But police departments, sheriff’s offices and federal agencies are all part of the government. Anything governmental becomes bureaucratic, and bureaucrats never give money back to the taxpayers. Law enforcement will simply emphasize the need to refocus its efforts on the remaining illegal drugs, spend the same amount of money or more and lock up just as many people.

Wait a minute… are you arguing against re-directing the 40% of drug enforcement budgets for law enforcement against the remaining illegal drugs and people actually committing violent personal and property crime?

The money and effort spent on enforcement is the only argument for legalizing drugs that offers any public benefit. Short of legalizing all drugs, I see no savings for the public.

The question then becomes, are we prepared for the social problems that could result from uncontrolled drug use. We have experimented with that and we know what the answer was. My instinct is that we would arrive at the same or that answer once more.

What we have now is uncontrolled drug use.  Prohibition is the abdication of control over a popular market by a government.  “Here, criminals, lots of people like drugs, so why don’t you handle all the manufacture, trafficking, and profits with no oversight or regulation!”  However, you never mention what the “answer” was, but by implication I think you’re referring to the counter-culture of the 1960s.  “Don’t legalize it, people!  Do we really want to go back to bell bottoms and flower-power?  Left unchecked, in ten years we could suffer another epidemic of disco fever!”  (Hey, if legalization means less Black Eyed Peas and more Beatles, less auto-tuning and more actual tuning, and less computer-synth and more guitars, we can’t legalize soon enough!)