Opinion

Halloween riots add fuel to pot decriminalization fire

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Related stories:

• Have a wild and safe Halloween (October 30, 2003)
• Let Halloween fall where it may (October 9, 2003)
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• Students need to voice opinion (October 6, 2005)
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Also by Matt Lynch:

• Time for Council to get defiant (April 23, 2003)
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• America's other war less certain (March 26, 2003)
• Wartime propaganda caters to dumbest common denominator (April 2, 2003)

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I am not a pot smoker, but I know plenty of them. Because I do, I feel confident in this: The Halloween mini-riot early Sunday morning would never have happened if everyone was stoned instead of drunk.

There might have been some unrest in line at the pizza joints, and people may have begun waiting outside the convenience stores six hours before they opened the next morning. But mob mentality and fights would not have happened. Tear gas would have been unnecessary. Stoners have neither the energy nor the aggression to cause such problems.

Yet marijuana possession and distribution still goes heavily punished by states and the federal government. Within the next decade, this will change. It’s already started.

Public opinion has certainly shifted since the time these laws were enacted. As the baby-boomer generation — the first to experience a large-scale embrace of marijuana — gets closer to retirement, the country is finally in the position where almost every citizen has had some experience with pot, whether having used it himself or knowing others who have.

Early films like “Reefer Madness” play upon fear and ignorance of the drug; such tactics do not work anymore. When drug czar John Walters speaks of marijuana’s terrible impact on society through increased domestic violence and “crippling addiction,” former hippies can only laugh. When the Bush administration continues giving it the ominous label of “gateway drug,” it does not realize that it weakens its own argument for prohibition: Pot is only a gateway drug because it is illegal, making the sellers the same sketchy characters who also sell heroin and cocaine. Were the markets for these drugs separated, the gateway effect would disappear.

Then there is the new ad campaign, linking marijuana use with financial support for terrorism. Such ads are fine for deterring individual purchases of marijuana as the law stands now, but they also beg the question: If the prohibition of marijuana is bringing such immense illegal profits to the terror groups that deal the drugs, shouldn’t the government take that market out of the terrorists’ hands?

This paradox may go unnoticed by the oldest generation of Americans, but it is not by many of the baby boomers — the generation currently in power in most of the country. Discussing decriminalization is no longer taboo in politics. It has been embraced by many economic conservatives and social liberals alike, and the medical-marijuana initiatives of today are merely the beginning of this realignment of political reality with public opinion.

Polls show most Americans want to keep pot possession technically against the law, but temper this illegality with lax enforcement, fines or rehab rather than prison and medical loopholes. They are wary of wholesale legalization but also understand the ultimate injustice and social uselessness of sending federal agents to bust a few adults passing a joint in their home, let alone those growing it to help out with little old ladies’ glaucoma (as they did in California last year). Nevadans Tuesday voted on an initiative to legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults. Alaskans voted on a similar bill in 2000. Though neither side won resounding victory in these referendums, the very fact that they were on the political agenda shows the wave of the future.

Marijuana referendums will continue to pop up more and more, bringing the unquestioned into question, and those who have had experience with marijuana will by and large come to the same conclusion. Marijuana might not be the healthiest thing to put in your lungs, but at least that’s a self-inflicted risk and individual harm.

But the negative impact of its prohibition and strict enforcement is felt by everyone. We are all harmed by the money wasted on enforcement. We are all harmed by sending non-threatening citizens to jail, where they often become threatening. We are all harmed by handing lucrative marijuana profits to organized criminal groups, which then push harder drugs upon their customers.

Yet the drug czar still deems pot too dangerous for society, either in full legalization or pseudo decriminalization. Perhaps he should take the question to Madison police officers who had bottles and bricks thrown at them Sunday morning, and ask them if they would have preferred dealing with 65,000 drunks or 65,000 stoners.

Speaking on behalf of the growing millions in this country who question the wisdom of federal drug laws, I think we know the answer.

Matt Lynch (mlynch@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in English and political science.