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Repeal Prohibition, Again
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
It took 13 years for the United States
to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept
drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates
arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the
current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to
prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.
The federal government should
repeal the ban on marijuana.
We reached that conclusion
after a great deal of discussion among the members of The Times’s Editorial
Board, inspired by a rapidly growing movement among the states to reform
marijuana laws.
There are no perfect answers
to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such
answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health
effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls
squarely on the side of national legalization. That will put decisions on
whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs
— at the state level.
We considered whether it
would be best for Washington
to hold back while the states continued experimenting with legalizing medicinal
uses of marijuana, reducing penalties, or even simply legalizing all use.
Nearly three-quarters of the states have done one of these.
But that would leave their citizens
vulnerable to the whims of whoever happens to be in the White House and chooses
to enforce or not enforce the federal law.
The social costs of the
marijuana laws are vast. There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in
2012, according to F.B.I. figures,
compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives. Even worse,
the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining
their lives and creating new generations of career criminals.
There is honest debate among
scientists about the health effects of marijuana, but we believe that the
evidence is overwhelming that addiction and dependence are relatively minor
problems, especially compared with alcohol and tobacco. Moderate use of
marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults. Claims
that marijuana is a gateway to more dangerous drugs are as fanciful as the
“Reefer Madness” images of murder, rape and suicide.
There are legitimate concerns
about marijuana on the development of adolescent brains. For that reason, we
advocate the prohibition of sales to people under 21.
Creating systems for
regulating manufacture, sale and marketing will be complex. But those problems
are solvable, and would have long been dealt with had we as a nation not clung
to the decision to make marijuana production and use a federal crime.
In coming days, we will
publish articles by members of the Editorial Board and supplementary material
that will examine these questions. We invite readers to offer their ideas, and
we will report back on their responses, pro and con.
We recognize that this
Congress is as unlikely to take action on marijuana as it has been on other big
issues. But it is long past time to repeal this version of Prohibition.
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