Crosstalk: Is legalizing pot a good or bad move?

In reality, the heightened focus on enforcement and prevention education has made buying illegal drugs enough of a risk that most people won’t go there.

What would the world look like today if federal and state officials simply ignored the trafficking of heroin, cocaine, pot, methamphetamine and other narcotics?

The Obama Administration reported last year that control measures have caused the rate of overall illegal drug use in America to drop by roughly one-third over the past three decades.

Since 2006, meth use in the U.S. has been cut by half and cocaine use has dropped by nearly 40 percent.

However, misuse of legal prescription drugs has gone up, along with use of marijuana, which proponents have spent a lot of time and energy extolling as a “safe high.”

This situation reminds me of the plot in the science fiction book “Brave New World,” by Aldous Huxley.

In that utopian society, citizens were encouraged by their leaders to take Soma pills anytime they felt agitated or stressed about the complexities of life.

How many people do you know who take daily doses of an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medicine? The Mayo Clinic reported in 2014 that one in every seven Americans now regularly uses one of these drugs.

It seems like there should be more focus on what is driving people to pills before we bring pot into the picture as a legal alternative.

Adding pot to the mix is scary given that we have no real way to measure the level of impairment if someone is stoned behind the wheel, something that should have been figured out before it became legal.

And we all know the black market is here to stay — another justification for legalizing pot —because the government will impose such high taxes on sales that it will be cheaper for people to buy the drug from a dealer. And it will be impossible for law enforcement officials to track where people have purchased pot because it doesn’t come in a recognizable container.

The edibles in pretty packages are attractive to children, which creates another problem.

Marijuana use should have remained counter-culture because the last thing society needs right now is another way for people to avoid dealing with reality.

by Mark Gibson

When the war on drugs was first declared, I remember being quite confused: Drugs were everywhere, and yet the police were struggling to find them. It didn’t make sense to me. My own hometown, which had only three or four retail establishments, was dominated by a large store sporting a brightly lit neon sign with huge letter spelling out DRUGS. The war on drugs raged on, yet there was the drug store, clearly overlooked by the enforcement agencies.

I eventually learned that there are two kinds of drugs: Legal drugs purchased under the “DRUGS” sign, and illegal drugs purchased by dealers located by mysterious methods I still didn’t really understand.

By fifth grade I knew that marijuana was both a plant and a drug, and even how to spell the word “marijuana,” but I didn’t know much about the mechanics of ingestion. That lack in my education wasn’t really addressed until about seventh grade, when “anti” drug movies demonstrated with great care how to roll and smoke a “joint.”

In regards to my high school years, I plead the fifth.

Today, the drug landscape is even more confusing than it was when I was a kid: There are legal drugs sold by prescription; legal drugs sold without a prescription and therefore illegal; legal drugs that are illegal if you are under 21; and as of July 1, marijuana that is legal to purchase in Washington, legal to possess in Oregon, illegal to purchase in Washington and transport to Oregon, and illegal to purchase in Oregon.

And, to add to the confusion, marijuana legally grown and possessed anywhere in the United States, with or without a prescription, is illegal by federal law should they choose to enforce that law.

Many of the changes we see today began years ago when marijuana was first decriminalized in Oregon and elsewhere, and then legalized for medicinal use.

Indeed, it can be argued that the complete legalization of marijuana regardless of use simplifies things considerably. Perhaps the federal government will add to our long-term clarity by changing the federal law regarding marijuana.

Tomorrow’s challenge will be to curb the excesses and abuses that are bound to crop up — pot marketed to those under age, for example — and identify and validate accurate sources of information on the drug’s impact so we can one and all make an informed choice to use — or not use — legal marijuana.