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Townhall.com -Printer Friendly _ Page 1 of 2 Townixnfl.r~mm •'RL11L t: YA OI~M:V.V Ip:'N `S Blog I Talk Radio Online I Columnists I Your OPinron I The News I Photos I Funnies I Books @ Movies 1 Issues I Action Center Bogarting Sanity in the Marijuana Wars By Kathleen Parker Friday, July 6, 2007 WASHINGTON News that AI Gore's 24-year-old son, Ai Gore III, was busted for pot and assorted prescription pills has unleashed a torrent of mirth in certain quarters. ~ • • Gore-phobes on the Internet apparently view the son's . • • , arrest and incarceration as rnmeuppance for the father's shortcomings. Especially rich was the fact that young AI was driving a Toyota Prius when he was pulled over for going 100 mph just as Papa Gore was set to preside over concerts during a 24-hour, seven-rnntinent Live Earth celebration to raise awareness about global warming. Whatever one may feel about the former vice president's environmental obsessions, his son's problems are no one's cause for celebration. The younger Gore's high- proflle arrest does, however, offer Americans an opportunity to get real about drug prohibition, and especially about marijuana laws. For the record, I have no interest in marijuana except as a public policy matter. My personal drug of choice is a heavenly elixir made from crushed grapes. But it is, alas, a drug. Tasty, attractive and highly ritualized in our culture, wine and other alcoholic beverages are approved for responsible use despite the fact that alcoholism and attendant problems are a plague, while responsible use of a weed that, at worst, makes people boring and hungry, is criminal. Pot smokers might revolt if they weren't so mellow. Efforts over the past few decades to relax marijuana laws have been moderately successful. Twelve states have decriminalized marijuana, which usually means no prison or criminal record for first-time possession of small amounts for personal consumption. (Those states are: Alabama, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon.) Yet even now, federal law enforcement agents raid the homes of terminally ill patients who use marijuana for relief from suffering in states where medical marijuana use is permitted. These federal raids have become an issue in the 2008 presidential race as candidates have been asked to take a position. A summary is available on the Marijuana Policy Project Web site (mpp.org). Beyond the medical issue is the practical question of criminalizing otherwise good citizens for consuming a nontoxic substance described by the British medical journal Lancet as less harmful to health than alrnhol or tobacco at great economic and social cost. Each year, more than 700,000 people are arrested for marijuana-related offenses at a cost of more than $7 billion, according to the Marijuana Policy Project. Here's a Bingo thought for people concerned about the federal deficit, America's 4.5 million uninsured children or our soon-to-be-bankrupt Social Security system: If marijuana were legalized, regulated and taxed at the rates applied to alcohol and tobacco, revenues would reach about $6.2 billion annually, according to an open letter signed by 500 ernnomists who urged President Bush and other public officials to debate marijuana prohibition. Among those economists were three Nobel http:l/www.townhall.com/Common/f'rint.aspx Comm. t~pr • S 7/23/2007 Ref. To: Rif. Gate t 2 Z00