Pubdate: Wed, 04 Apr 2001 Source: News-Times, The (CT) Copyright: 2001 The News-Times Contact: http://www.newstimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/637 Author: Robert White MARIJUANA USE SHOULD BE LEGALIZED I am a conservative Republican, but I would like to make the case for legalization of marijuana - the conservative argument. The so-called war on drugs has spawned police actions that threaten everyone's Fourth Amendment rights. These tactics are more suitable to a Soviet or Nazi regime than our freedom-loving society. For this reason, conservatives from Milton Friedman to William F. Buckley, and even George P. Schulz, advocate the legalization of drugs like marijuana. Is it even in the state's interest to prevent a person from taking action that he believes is both relatively harmless and potentially helpful? The truly conservative stance is to allow people the freedom to make up their minds based on their own private experience with the drug. I do not believe the state has an interest in prohibiting marijuana, but for the sake of argument let's suppose there is one. Leaving aside disagreements on the merits or harm of smoking pot, how should the state deal with people who, based on our rational apprehension of the relative safety of the drug, choose to violate the law by smoking marijuana? How harshly should the state punish offenders whose offense harms no one else? Is it appropriate to punish the pot smoker with prison, which is itself more harmful than pot smoking by itself? Is that not akin to saying, "Your windshield has a crack in it, so I'm going to smash it with a sledgehammer." By so doing, the state takes a small, private, nearly harmless act and punishes it with a potentially life threatening act - incarceration in prisons where assault and rape are commonplace. As any consumer of marijuana will attest, the effects of this drug are far from evil. As is often suggested, however, the way we currently punish pot smokers is evil. Robert White DANBURY - --- MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe