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Evans: Case Against Amendment 44 Mighty Dopey
Clay Evans | Daily Camera | 10/29/2006

I was on an RTD bus recently when two young buffoons sparked up a doobie a couple rows behind me.

I turned and stared as these clowns tried to hide their joint and hold searing lungfuls of smoke until I turned away.

"Put it out," I said. "I don't want it in my face."

"What?" one replied.

So I reported the miscreants, and the driver kicked them off at the next stop — just a few blocks from where they'd barely managed to scrape together enough change for fare to Longmont. As the old commercial said, "Why do you think they call it dope?"

I recount that tale so you don't think I'm just some scammin' pothead when I say we should pass Amendment 44, which would "legalize ... the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults 21 years of age and older" in Colorado.

Oddly, all the argument you need in favor of the amendment can be found in the flimsy, speculative, unsupported "Arguments Against" in the 2006 election "blue book" produced by the Legislative Council:

"Marijuana may lead a person to use or possess other illegal drugs." Note the word "may." This old "gateway" argument has been largely discredited. Some pot smokers move on to "harder stuff," but the same can be said for those who drink alcohol or use nicotine. But substances don't create addicts; in most cases, there is an underlying psychological reason for drug use, abuse and addiction.

"(T)he only safe alternative to alcohol or drug intoxication is sobriety." I agree. But history demonstrates that prohibition doesn't lead to sobriety.

"Policy discussions should not focus on whether alcohol or marijuana is a safer drug...." Pot can, and does, ruin lives; I've seen it. But let's not be asinine: Pot is a wisp of smoke next to the bonfire of destructiveness caused by booze, our special friend, which inspires cute commercials and strikingly juvenile behavior among supposed adults. (Eavesdrop sometime on grownups talking about how very clever they are for drinking alcohol or getting wasted.)

"Colorado should enforce, not repeal, drug laws." No reason given here, but let's play this throwaway line. Let's go after and imprison — since our laws are focused on incarceration, not treatment — every citizen who breaks a drug law. Are you ready to pay the taxes to keep 'em all locked up, and for the reams of police we'll need to hire?

Besides, the problem isn't so much that the laws aren't enforced, but that they are unenforceable. And having unenforceable laws inevitably leads to unequal treatment and a dwindling respect for the law.

As Albert Einstein said in 1921, with regard to alcohol prohibition, "(N)othing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law ... than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." Ditto for 2006, with regard to drug prohibition.

Even if Amendment 44 were to pass, federal anti-marijuana laws — which supersede state law — would still be enforceable. But federal officers generally aren't interested in small-fry.

Trying to undo the foolish, feel-good, failed "War on Drugs" state by state is inefficient. But since the feds remain slavishly devoted to wasting billions on an ineffective law-enforcement solution to a public-health problem, to filling up prisons with non-violent offenders — usually without addressing their underlying addiction, so that most go right back to using drugs as soon as they are released — this is the only way to do it.

Contact Clay Evans at (303) 473-1352 or evansc@dailycamera.com.