Arthur Salm: Legalize marijuana

Arthur Salm is the SDNN city columnist.

I have this, well, friend, and he …

That’s the traditional it-ain’t-me-but-it-really-is-me dodge. But this time it really is a friend, and it really ain’t me. I have to be all cagey about it, and can’t give you his name, because if I did it might cost him his job.

Not that he’s done something illegal. Not that he’s even thinking about doing something illegal. Rather, he just wishes he could do something that some people believe should be illegal. But if his employer found out he was wishing such a thing - however wistfully - he might find himself out on the increasingly crowded street.

My friend has glaucoma. And he’d like to smoke some marijuana. You know - to find out if it helps keep him from going blind. He can’t do it, though. Seems his company stages random drug tests. Anyone who comes up positive gets fired on the spot. Medical marijuana card? That’s nice. Maybe it’ll impress your next employer, if you ever find one.

It’s still up in the smoke-and-incense-filled air whether or not marijuana reduces intraocular pressure better than the altogether legal drugs on the market. Maybe it does for some people, not for others. My friend would just like to give it a try. You know - to find out if it helps keep him from going blind.

And, not at all incidentally, to find out if it might save him some money. The eye-drop medication he’s currently using sets him back around $125 a month, if you include office visits, which he certainly does when he looks at his cash flow. And that’s the cost through his health insurance.

Maybe marijuana could reduce his dependence on the eye drops. Maybe marijuana could replace the eye drops.

Maybe marijuana wouldn’t do anything at all for his glaucoma, but would just get him loaded, so that every now and then he wouldn’t worry so much about the cost of the eye drops. And about maybe going blind.

But never mind that. And never mind the use of marijuana in alleviating chronic pain. And never mind marijuana bolstering the appetites of AIDS sufferers and cancer patients ravaged by chemotherapy. And we won’t even talk about how some argue (another nice dodge!) that getting good and high on good ol’ weed is less harmful than getting snozzled on gin & tonic even if you toss in a twist of lime, which, god knows, you should.

Never mind any of that. Instead, how about this. Headline in The New York Times, 3/23/09: “Mexican Drug Cartel Violence Spills Over, Alarming U.S.” The hook to the story was a brutal beating in Tucson: “Sergeant Azuelo quickly began to suspect that the pistol whipping he was investigating was linked to a drug dispute. Within minutes, his detectives had found a blood-spattered scale, marijuana buds and leaves and a bundle of cellophane wrap used in packing marijuana.”

Now, this simply would not have happened if the stuff, which is, after all, probably safer than gin - even Tanqueray, for heaven’s sake- was legal. And neither would the horrific violence stone-cold guaranteed to take place in San Diego sometime in the near future. And then it’ll happen again, and then again, and then again.

Here’s what else will happen. You’ll see headlines that read something like “Drug Kingpin Nabbed in Lair; Severe Blow Dealt to Such-and-Such Cartel,” and “45 Tons of Pot Seized.” At which point(s) we’ll all collectively exhale (and I stand - swaying, yes, but steadfast - behind that image) because the War on Drugs will have been won. Or will have turned the corner. Or will at least have begun in earnest. Right.

Anybody seen a timetable for this thing? An exit strategy?

And never mind … no. It counts. It all counts. The prisons choked with nonviolent offenders. The prisons choked with violent offenders who wouldn’t be violent offenders if there weren’t so much money to be made in trafficking. The preposterous posturing against medicinal marijuana by San Diego County Supervisors Bill Horn, Diane Jacob, Greg Cox, and Pam Slater-Price - teetotalers all, I assume. Either that, or heartless hypocrites. Though it’s certainly possible to be both.

Look, we all used to get high. Most of us, anyway. Some of us … some of you still do. The people I know sort of drifted away from it; after a while, what do you know? - they look around and realize they haven’t toked up in two or three decades. Or they do it a few times a year. Or, what the hell, a couple of times a month. Taxpayers all. The stuff isn’t harmless, to be sure, and there are people who manage to trash their lives over it, but it’d be interesting to hear an argument about how tens of millions of us … tens of millions of you belong in prison.

Those sweet-smelling winds may at last be shifting, though. (“I took a whiff as a cloud rolled by / And my nose went up like an infield fly.” - Tom Paxton, “Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues.”)

Eric Holder, the new U.S. Attorney General, said recently that he will direct federal agents to go after only those medicinal marijuana distributors who are violating both federal and state law. And California law says it’s legal.

As for my friend, well, glaucoma is frightening, but so are those unemployment figures.

He’ll stick to eye drops.

Tags: SDNN

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Columns, Health, Lifestyle, Politics & Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.