Legalize Marijuana, Save Lives

Two years ago, Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared his intention to shut down Mexico's drug cartels.

The only significant effect this new effort seems to have had is to trigger an eruption of violence.

The University of San Diego Trans-Border Institute estimates 7,337 lives have been lost in Mexico's drug war, including more than 1,500 deaths in 2009 alone.

Compare that to, for instance, the 4,260 U.S. casualties of the Iraq War.

This slaughter is not driven primarily by cocaine, methamphetamines or even heroin.

Marijuana, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, is the "cash crop" of Mexican drug cartels. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said up to 70 percent of Mexican violence is fueled by the marijuana trade.

The majority of marijuana exported from Mexico goes to the U.S., a country whose own war on drugs, though having gone on for much longer than two years, shows a similar lack of progress.

Since its declaration by President Richard Nixon in 1971, the U.S. War on Drugs has absorbed greater and greater amounts of money.

Government figures for 2009 predict the spending of at least $22.1 billion.

That's about $700 per second, assuming no unexpected costs of any kind are incurred. And, if the trend of the past 37 years continues, next year this figure will be higher.

And what are these billions of tax dollars buying?

Marijuana continues to be grown in significant quantities in every state, and is available cheaply and conveniently almost everywhere.

With such plentiful resources available, why is it the War on Drugs seems incapable of even denting marijuana commerce and usage?

My own experience with socially-focused antidrug programs has led me to conclude that while they are well-equipped in material terms, they are usually coordinated with ineptitude and naivete.

Take for example the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., program.

D.A.R.E. consumes more than $1 billion per year, some of which is contributed by the government.

It's fabulously popular with teachers and parents, having been implemented in 75 percent of U.S. school districts with the help of more than 7,800 law enforcement officers.

D.A.R.E. assemblies, as I remember them, were a mixture of smarmy inspirationalism and scare tactics. When we weren't learning about positivity and teamwork as taught by Daren, the anthropomorphic, sunglasses-wearing lion, we were hearing grim tales of flaming death in marijuana-fueled road accidents.

Needless to say, the whole exercise seemed fishy.

After all, I knew many students who used marijuana, and none of them had been consumed by fireballs.

A little homework revealed that while marijuana is carcinogenic and impairs short-term memory, the odds of its leading one to shrieking, fiery doom are pretty remote.

Research suggests that many other students have shared my skeptical reaction to D.A.R.E.'s theatrical techniques.Indiana University, the University of Maryland, the Research Triangle Institute and the American Psychological Association have all published studies demonstrating that D.A.R.E. is useless in changing youths' behavior, and may unintentionally encourage drug use.

And all this is in spite of its immense funding and support.

But, then, how could D.A.R.E. and other sub-efforts of the War on Drugs better discourage people from substance abuse?

It's my observation that factual knowledge provides a better reference for dealing with reality than even the most meticulously-constructed fiction.

If antidrug programs relied less on byzantine propaganda techniques and focused more on educating people of all relevant facts, no matter how inconvenient to their agenda, they might actually start working.

I know that I don't want to do heroin, not because of the horror stories or gross-out photographs shown to me by D.A.R.E. people, but because of scientific data and the unembellished accounts of heroin usage provided by authors like William Burroughs and Hubert Selby, Jr.

The disappointing truth is that marijuana, while harmful, isn't particularly terrifying.

By distorting the negative effects of marijuana, antidrug programs squander the credibility that could be used to steer people away from more deservedly controlled substances.

Speaking of, one might wonder why the government would spend billions and arrest millions in a clearly futile attempt to eradicate the usage of a substance that is much less hazardous than many legal drugs, such as alcohol, which kills 6.5 times more youth than all other drugs combined.

Honestly, I don't know for certain what has led the government and the public to become so phobic of marijuana and so cozy with alcohol. However, it's clear the data don't justify this attitude. It is irrational.

Prohibition of alcohol was repealed because it was practically unenforceable, because it promoted organized crime and because, as a legal drug, alcohol can be taxed for funds that go toward repairing the damage it causes.

Marijuana is, in these terms, fundamentally similar to alcohol.

If marijuana were decriminalized, we could take the billions being incinerated in ineffectual attempts to control it and inject them into our desiccated economy.

We could arrest 800,000 fewer people per year. We could put more effort into controlling genuinely dangerous drugs. And we could instantaneously gut the Mexican cartels, which are murdering thousands.

It is the irrational attitudes of American policymakers that provide these cartels with an incentive to murder.

No informed person would argue that we're lowering the net number of deaths by keeping marijuana "controlled," and yet we continue.

As long as our government persists in this fashion, every murder committed by Mexican drug cartels is done with U.S. complicity.

Therefore, I ask the public to try engaging in a rational and evidence-based dialogue on the legal status of marijuana.

Or, at very least, I would ask the U.S. government to try to fail on a budget of less than $700 per second.