Time to end prohibition

Assemblyman Joe Hogan, D-Las Vegas, will certainly get grief for introducing a bill to legalize marijuana in Nevada.

That’s regular marijuana, not medical marijuana or synthetic marijuana. Hogan’s bill, which will be introduced in Carson City on Monday, would allow adults 21 years old and older to possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana for any and all uses, including recreation.

“Certainly, it will be a bit controversial,” says Hogan, in one of the understatements of the year. But he says the revenue from marijuana taxes — which he wants to use for education — and freeing up police from marijuana enforcement is more than worth it. “Our current fascination with the version of prohibition we have now is very unfortunate,” Hogan said.

Hogan is a brave soul for taking up this issue, and he deserves respect for doing so. He’ll undoubtedly be criticized as out of the mainstream, although that argument is getting harder and harder to make. Voters in Colorado and Washington state have legalized the drug outright. Medical marijuana is legal in 18 states and the District of Columbia.

Meanwhile, drug-connected violence in Mexico has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Millions of dollars are being spent on a drug war that can never be won. The federal government continues to pretend marijuana has no medical value and to list it alongside much more dangerous substances such as LSD, heroin and Ecstasy. People whose only crime was to have purchased marijuana are arrested, saddled with a criminal record or locked up.

The reality is, alcohol and tobacco are far more dangerous, and, unlike marijuana, they’re addictive. Yet society has found a way to live with the legalization of those drugs, regulating their use and even profiting from their taxation. The same could easily be done for marijuana.

So, with plenty of arguments in favor, why is Hogan’s bill considered a long shot before it’s even drafted?

First, politics. A politician can hardly ever go wrong by coming out as tough on drugs, while one who favors legalization can easily be pilloried as pro-drug use in an election. At a hearing on an unrelated bill to guarantee sick patients a supply of medical marijuana, former U.S. attorney-turned-state Sen. Greg Brower, R-Reno, blurted out, “marijuana use is harmful.”

Really? As harmful as downing half a bottle of Scotch? As harmful as smoking two packs a day for 20 years?

Second, the federal government. We’ve yet to see how Washington, D.C., deals with the states’ rights rebellion in Colorado and Washington, but federal agents have not relented in busting medical marijuana operations in states that have legalized medical pot. An argument could be made that Nevada would simply be setting residents up for arrest by agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, who could still enforce federal law, at least until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on state-based legalization.

Third, the details. Hogan said in an interview last month that his bill doesn’t yet address an appropriate DUI standard for marijuana. Currently, state law holds that a person cannot have more than two nanograms of marijuana in the blood, a ridiculously low threshold. (For cocaine or heroin, it’s 50 nanograms.) That law was used to send Jessica Williams to prison for decades in 2000, even after a jury found she was not impaired in an asleep-at-the-wheel accident that killed six.

But those details could be worked out if Nevada lawmakers had the will to do it. Whether they do it to increase state revenue, or because the war on marijuana is a silly and failed exercise, or just because it’s the right thing, it’s long past time to take this simple, common-sense step.

Someday, we’ll look back and wonder what took so long, and maybe then Hogan will get the respect he deserves for acting on the issue now.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.