We live in a country where the police force was allowed to shackle a hospice patient to her gurney while conducting a medical marijuana bust. In our country, officers cited a six-year-old for selling fake drugs when he gave a bag of dirt to a friend. As law enforcement inflicts so much harm on our citizens while enforcing the prohibition of marijuana, we would be better off with it legalized. As taxpayers, we are unnecessarily paying large sums of money to keep marijuana prices high and the prison industry flourishing. Our current prohibition has vilified marijuana users and peddlers, which naturally leads to harsh punishments and the blind persecution of users regardless of the reasons for their drug use. Prohibition of marijuana greatly increases its danger to any user's health. Moreover, despite the high costs, severe laws and health risks, the government has been ineffective in decreasing either the marijuana trade or the drug's use. Legalizing marijuana would be a step in the right direction financially, morally and practically.

First, I will define what I mean by legalization. Legalizing marijuana would make it a controlled substance like alcohol and tobacco. Restrictions would then be placed on age, amount of purchase, purity and advertising. Punishment for marijuana-related crimes would be similar to current punishments for offenses like drunk driving. Licenses would be distributed to marijuana sellers and growers. As long as your marijuana use, sale or production conformed to the guidelines, you would not be punished.

The cost of prohibiting marijuana is immense. American taxpayers spend $40 billion a year on the Drug War. This includes tens of millions of dollars for every federal agency including the U.S. Forest Service, who can now carry guns. Catching, prosecuting and imprisoning mainly low-level marijuana dealers is an expensive enterprise, and it has flooded American jails. About 55 percent of inmates in federal prisons are incarcerated for drug crimes, and 60 percent of those incarcerations are for marijuana. In Riverside, Calif., civil cases literally cannot be tried because the justice system is overflowing with criminal cases, most concerning drugs. The American prison-building industry is growing faster than almost all other industries to accommodate our incarcerated population, which per capita is the highest in the world and has doubled since 1990.

The U.S. has vilified marijuana, demonizing users as "potheads" and dealers as incurable delinquents. However, the harm marijuana causes is dwarfed by substances that are legal. There has never been a single death in the U.S. caused solely by marijuana use, as compared to millions caused by alcohol and tobacco. By forbidding its use we deny its possible benefits and condemn those who choose to use it, even for medical purposes. Marijuana is classified in the U.S. as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning that it has no medical uses but a high potential for abuse. However, the Drug Enforcement Agency's own administrative law judge, Francis Young, acknowledges that "marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within the supervised routine of medical care" (http://www.drugwarfacts.org/marijuana.html).

Mandatory minimums, used by the legislature to set minimum punishments for drug crimes, are another result of this vilification. These mandatory sentencing guidelines effectively transfer power from the judge to the prosecutor, denying defendants the judge's neutrality and the very individuality of their cases. The severe punishments handed down to drug users and dealers also demonstrate how those who touch the drug have been demonized. For one joint, you can end up in prison for up to a year; for growing one plant, you may be in for five. Such vilification results in cases like the auto repairman who was sentenced to 80 years in jail for growing marijuana, the only effective drug for his serious arthritis. Students all across America are denied federal funding under the Higher Education Act if they have been convicted of any drug crime, but they are not denied this funding for committing murder or rape.

Another problem with prohibiting marijuana is the increased health danger. We are putting criminals in charge of a drug that 75 percent of American adults have tried at some point in their lives. Illegal substances are always produced in their purest, most potent form in order to maximize profit, especially since the punishment dealers face does not depend on the quality of the substance but only the quantity. THC levels in marijuana have been rising continuously during the Drug War, from much less than one percent in the 1970s to an average of four to six percent today. Marijuana use has been made more dangerous by government efforts to stamp it out. This unnecessary harm could be eliminated by government regulation of a legal marijuana industry.

Despite all of the financial and health costs of prohibition, neither marijuana trade nor use of the drug has decreased. Cases of police corruption are constantly surfacing as marijuana prices rise and the profit margin increases. If guards can't keep marijuana out of our prisons, how will police ever keep it off the streets? The large profit margin explains why low-level dealers will always fill the places of those sent to jail. In fact, marijuana is worth so much in the United States that it is estimated to be the number-one cash crop in California today. Efforts at preventing marijuana use have failed similarly. Education programs like Drug Abuse Resistance Education exaggerate its harm, and students quickly realize that they are being lied to. Marijuana use among eighth, 10th and 12th graders increased steadily throughout the 1990s.

The solution to the marijuana "problem" is legalization. Like cocaine and heroin, marijuana is extremely cheap to produce. Making it legal in California would save the state $1 billion per year in enforcement. Adding a tax like those on tobacco and alcohol would add $1.5 billion per year to California coffers. Strikingly, all terrorist groups in the United States have drug money as their main source of funds. Legalizing marijuana would take away their dope profits and bankrupt marijuana dealers across America. It would drastically reduce nonviolent prison populations across America, saving taxpayer money that could be spent on humane treatment programs. Legalization would allow the government to regulate the purity and amount of marijuana sold and would allow hospitals to administer it as pain medication. Students would no longer be denied federal funding for using a substance much less dangerous or addictive than many prescription drugs are today.

But is legalization really a viable alternative? We have to look no further than Amsterdam to see that it is. Amsterdam has managed to make marijuana a controlled substance without an increase in marijuana use. Amsterdam has half the per capita marijuana use of the United States. Forty-one percent of American 10th graders have used the drug, while in Holland only 28 percent have; how can this be? According to a Dutch chief constable, Holland has "managed to make pot boring." Based on the decriminalization of marijuana in 12 American states in the 1970s and in two Australian states more recently, legalization would not result in a marked increase in use. In fact, the effect of marijuana legalization might be a decrease in the consumption of legal drugs. The alcohol and tobacco industries must have this in mind, as they are the source of the primary funds for the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

Our country is harming the very people it seeks to protect through financial loss, vilification, mass incarceration and policy failure. It is time to demand the legalization of marijuana.

Many facts from this article come from drugwarfacts.org and speeches by Superior Court Judge James Gray and former police officer Jack Cole.

Irwin can be reached at aeirwin@amherst.edu