Legalizing Pot Won't Turn Everyone into a Dope Fiend

Since recreational pot use became legal in Colorado on Jan. 1, there's been a whole slew of people admitting to marijuana use in their youth, including columnists David Brooks and Ruth Marcus. Both are still opposed to legalization, mostly on the grounds that it will increase the number of users and affect teenagers whose brains are still developing.

The president then entered the fray, saying in a New Yorker interview that he thought marijuana wasn't any worse than alcohol, and that rich and middle-class white kids smoke dope all the time and get away with it (as Brooks and Marcus can hypocritically attest), but minority kids get arrested and jailed much more frequently for exactly the same offense.

Now Texas governor Rick Perry has chimed in, saying at a conference in Davos, Switzerland that he's for decriminalization of pot. Not legalization, but softening the punishment, eliminating jail time for minor possession offenses.

It's good to hear Perry is moving toward reason, but "decriminalization" doesn't solve the problem. Cops will still waste their time chasing down pot smokers, only to send them to pointless rehab sessions. The drug wars between dealers and the cops, and various multinational narco-trafficking gangs will continue unabated. Weed, cash and guns will continue to be smuggled both ways across the US-Mexico border. Our courts and prisons will continue to be flooded with tens of thousands of low-level dealers caught with relatively small quantities of weed, costing billions of dollars annually. The quality of the pot distributed illegally in this country will be highly variable, frequently adulterated, possibly toxic and potentially dangerous because of the illegal sources.

I don't smoke pot. I don't drink. Never have. Never will. Both vices are a waste of time and money. Drinking causes many health problems (brain cell destruction, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, cirrhosis, anemia). Pot appears to be less immediately destructive than alcohol, but may be linked to cognitive impairment and cancer for heavy smokers.

Yet I still advocate making marijuana legal. Legalization would eliminate the problems associated with outlawing a popular product that is no worse than alcohol. By any measure, pot prohibition has failed totally: the laws have been no deterrent against pot use.

But Perry's and Brooks' and Marcus' fears are unjustified: making marijuana legal won't make everyone go out and start smoking up a storm.

Cigarettes have always been legal. The surgeon general's 1964 report established the link between smoking and heart and lung disease; if we based our laws on the dangers to health, tobacco should be more illegal than pot because there's so much more hard data about its effects. But Americans have been listening: in the 50 years since that report, tobacco use in the United States has plunged by 50%. People used to smoke cigarettes anywhere and everywhere: in their homes, in their cars, in their offices, in restaurants, in bars, even in movie theaters. By the 1980s separate smoking sections were established in restaurants. By the 1990s smoking was banned in workplaces in many states. By the 2000s smoking was totally banned in restaurants in many states.

Now, in the 2010s many states have banned smoking even in bars. Smokers have been chased outdoors to smoke, and many workplaces have even banned smoking outside their entrances. Many smokers voluntarily avoid smoking in their own homes and cars, particularly if they have children. It's a dirty, disgusting, expensive habit, and most smokers wish they could quit.

Legal marijuana should be subjected to the same restrictions as cigarette smoking, as it is in Colorado. Though there's some argument over it, smoking marijuana poses many of the same health risks as smoking tobacco (breathing any kind of smoke is just plain bad for you), and should have the same restrictions for the same reasons.

It's perfectly fine for Marcus and Brooks and Perry to express their moral outrage at pot smoking. I encourage them to let people know how utterly foolhardy it is to smoke: let the anti-pot opprobrium flow across the land; I hope it discourages broad use. But the American people have shown that they can listen to reason and wean themselves in large numbers from addictive substances like tobacco, so I trust they will do the same with pot.

We should wasting our tax dollars and law enforcement's and the courts' time to enforce moral indignation over drugs that are no worse than any number of substances that are already legal.