Marijuana Policy Project

The news that already this year more than 5,000 Mexicans across the border have been murdered in the "Drug War" should compel us once again to re-examine our dangerous, flawed policy of trying Prohibition as a way of controlling the uncontrollable, insatiable desire for a dangerous product. And we must take some or lots of the blame for those murders since it is our failure to control our drug lust, which is uncontrollable, but also our failure to control our disastrous "Drug War," which we can control and terminate, which has led to this. On Dec 5, we had the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition, which had been a conspicuous failure. It had not stopped bootlegging, which everyone, in contempt for the law, was involved in. It was hugely counterproductive, but not as bad as the "Drug War."

And Prohibition had fueled the development of a powerful, underground set of crime gangs, the largest headed by Al Capone, who controlled East Coast bootlegging from the Canadian border to the tip of Florida. There were murders galore, bodies tossed out of speeding automobiles, and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre with men lined up against the wall and machine-gunned. We are headed back to that, not only nationwide, but here in tiny Wilmington where the number of shootings rivals that of Tombstone, Ariz., in the quick draw 1880s.

We learned our lesson with Prohibition and Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt campaigned with a promise to get a repeal of the 18th amendment to our Constitution (which established Prohibition), and he did it, supported by such staunch Republicans as the du Ponts from Delaware, who recognized the national importance of repeal. We have forgotten that lesson, and despite an estimated 70 percent support for repeal among the voters the legislators, afraid of being called "soft on crime" have done nothing.

Meanwhile, despite an estimated cost among federal, state and local governments of $30 billion (yes, billion, not million) annually, despite murders everywhere, including a 5-year old child in a barber chair sitting next to an assassination victim here in Wilmington, despite the fact that nothing positive has been achieved in four decades of "War on Drugs," and we still have substantially the same amount of drugs being distributed every year, still we plod on insanely, expecting different results from doing the same thing, and not clearly seeing the tremendous damage we are doing by driving the price for drugs high with our ineffective prohibition, and thus making these gangs rich and able to corrupt officials in Columbia, Turkey, Argentina and yes, the United States.

We should immediately decriminalize marijuana, which certainly has not killed as many people as cigarettes. Marijuana should be handled just like cigarettes are now, with restrictions to protect children, with an appropriate tax perhaps on both the state and federal level, and with a publicity campaign similar to Surgeon General C.Everett Koop's highly successful campaign against cigarettes.

If that step works, as it certainly will, we should move on to stronger drugs, cocaine and heroin included. Perhaps we can follow Switzerland's excellent example of providing drugs through prescription for incurable addicts, with the administration of the drugs taking place in a doctor's office, one group after another. It works there; it will work here. The money for the gangs will be cut off, and our drug problem will shrink to the 1920s model of perhaps only a few hundred thousand addicts, receiving free treatment at a tiny fraction of the cost of the failed "Drug War."

Tell your legislators to support this. It is more important than that earmark they are trying to slip into the Budget Bill, and a chance to make a valid reputation for themselves and their State.