WASHINGTON -- News that Al Gore's 24-year-old son, Al Gore III, was busted for pot and assorted prescription pills last week unleashed a torrent of mirth in certain quarters.

Gore-phobes on the Internet apparently view the son's arrest and incarceration as comeuppance for the father's shortcomings. Especially rich was the fact that young Al was driving a Toyota Prius when he was pulled over for going 100 mph - just as Papa Gore was set to preside over concerts during a seven-continent Live Earth celebration to raise awareness about global warming.

Whatever one may feel about the former vice president's environmental obsessions, his son's problems are no one's cause for celebration. The younger Mr. Gore's high-profile arrest does, however, offer Americans an opportunity to get real about drug prohibition, and especially about marijuana laws.

For the record, I have no interest in marijuana except as a public policy matter. My personal drug of choice is a heavenly elixir made from crushed grapes. Tasty, attractive and highly ritualized in our culture, wine and other alcoholic beverages are approved for responsible use despite the fact that alcoholism and attendant problems are a plague, while responsible use of a weed that, at worst, makes people boring and hungry is criminal. Pot smokers might revolt if they weren't so mellow.

Efforts over the past few decades to relax marijuana laws have been moderately successful. Twelve states have decriminalized marijuana, which usually means no prison or criminal record for first-time possession of small amounts for personal use.

Yet even now, federal law enforcement agents raid the homes of terminally ill patients who use marijuana for relief from suffering in states where medical marijuana use is permitted.

Beyond the medical issue is the practical question of criminalizing otherwise good citizens for consuming a nontoxic substance - described by the British medical journal Lancet as less harmful to health than alcohol or tobacco - at great economic and social cost. Each year, more than 700,000 people are arrested for marijuana-related offenses at a cost of more than $7 billion, according to the Marijuana Policy Project.

If marijuana were legalized, regulated and taxed at the rates applied to alcohol and tobacco, revenues would reach about $6.2 billion annually, according to an open letter signed by 500 economists who urged President Bush and other public officials to debate marijuana prohibition. Among those economists were three Nobel Prize winners, including the late Milton Friedman of Stanford's Hoover Institution.

Mr. Friedman and others were acting in response to a 2005 report on the budgetary implications of marijuana prohibition by Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard. By Mr. Miron's estimate, regulating marijuana would save about $7.7 billion annually in government prohibition enforcement - $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels.

Add to that amount income taxes that would have to be paid by marijuana producers. Drug dealers don't pay taxes, after all. Nor do they concern themselves much with rules of the workplace and worker welfare.

Mr. Miron argues that legalizing marijuana would not increase use because decriminalization hasn't increased use. But, he says, legalization would reduce crime by neutralizing dealers and eliminating the violent black market.

Legalizing marijuana isn't an endorsement of underage or irresponsible use. Best would be that everyone deal with life unmedicated, but adults arguably have a right to amuse themselves in ways that don't harm others.

While some may balk at the idea of legalized pot, it seems clear that some remedy is in order. At the very least, a fresh debate free of politics and bureaucratic self-interest is overdue. Maybe Al Gore could moderate.

its just weed what wrong with it.


if god didnt want us to smoke it, why did he put it here?

god planted the seed to free people from boring lives and leave reality the government cant stand that they cant control people.

FRee The Weed!

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Important: Everything i do or say on this site is complete fiction and is made up by me and only me. I have never tried pot and never will and i would especially never even consider growing it.

There is no way for the government to control and tax weed like they do cigs and booze. That is why it isn't legal.

Cool info, i hope he helps out norml.

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Remember, Stupid Hurts!

I don't think it would be easy, but it could be done the same way. Sure, there will still be people that grow there own, just like people make beer and wine, but people would pay for the conveniance of going to the corner shop.

How do they regulate it in Amsterdam?

I keep hoping that we will finally get to a generation of Politicians who have used and understand that most of the propaganda is just that.

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Check it out, let me know what you think.

http://www.rollitup.org/grow-journal...park-grow.html

you can grow and smoke your own tobacco, you can even brew your own beer and alchol, you just can't sell these things without taxing and to do so is a crime.

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Remember, Stupid Hurts!

theres a new thing in canada now, they are thinking about decriminalizing marijuana and making it just a fine, which would be great! one step up

Of course you can. Treat it like what it is, a plant. Regulate its production and sale as you would any everyday plant. Cap what can be grown for personal use, tax what is sold (reasonably I hope....)... and you have just eliminated billions of $ of expenses, while producing billions in revenue.

People grow tomatoes at home, but there is still a giant tomato industry. Perhaps the % of marijuana users/growers will be a bit different, but there will be a GIANT market for it!!! The 1st large chain of marijuana superstores will make someone very rich

Common sense dictates it should be legal, there is no legit reason to outlaw it.

I draw a comparison to the autobahn... although not 100% speed limit free, it operates more effeciantly with % wise less crashes than the US interstate. The drivers are better trained, and the rules of the road make more sense. Less crashes per 1000 cars (or whatever figures they use), and you get where you are going at YOUR pace.

Free drug use with proper education would have the same effects.

I have on hand/have tried salvia... how they allow that to be legal, yet mexican dirt weed is absolutely illegal I have no idea. I also have no idea how something like 151 can be legal, when you can go to the liquor store and buy an absolutely horrid drink that serves no other purpose but to get absolutely flat on your ass drunk... and will VERY EASILY make you sick, and can just as easily KILL you.... but a natural growing herb that does no harm, BAN IT!

Frankly the idea of someone I've never seen telling me I can't do something that effects no one but myself makes me sick to my stomach... the selective enforcement and corruption as a result of the drug laws makes me SICKER.

puke in a bottle/moonshine, kewl!

Cancer on a stick, go for it!

harmless herb, go to jail

What drugs are politicians on? If I try some, will the ridiculous laws make sense?

people say we should get out and vote to make a difference. I say we make a stand and tell politicians we WON'T vote unless measures are taken to have the marijuana prohibition lifted. If enough people made that pledge, politicians would see us as an audience worth pursuing. Enough smokers/growers could really sway an election. Of course, it would probably just end up resulting in empty promises...

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