Acceptance of the use of medical marijuana in Maine and the discussion of a dispensary in Windham touches on issues as personal as the neighbor living with chronic pain and side effects of chemo-therapy, and as remote as the drug violence of Mexico and Jamaica where a high percentage of marijuana originates. I was impressed with Town Council Chair Bill Tracy’s comment during council discussions, “We need time to be thoughtful…” Indeed, thoughtfulness is warranted.

I’m sure there are very few unaware of the government’s “war on drugs.” Most may not know, however, how much has been spent over the last 40 years on this war, $2.5 trillion, according to Time Magazine. About $69 billion a year is spent currently trying to staunch the flow of drugs into the United States. In spite of these expenditures the current “drug czar,” or head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), Gil Kerlikowske, said in the Washington Post last year, “…not many people think the drug war is a success.” In addition, “Marijuana, historically the illicit drug of choice in [Maine], is plentiful and readily available,” says a 2008 ONDCP report. Like the experiment with prohibition against alcohol, which even garnered a Constitutional amendment but was ineffective from 1920 to 1933, the war on drugs from 1971 to the present has not changed attitudes nor prevented use.

Time magazine also reports that about $23 billion is spent on housing non-violent drug offenders in prison each year, 47 percent of whom are in prison for marijuana offenses, and $150 billion on policing and court costs. According to U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics, Americans in prison started climbing from about 350,000 in 1971 when President Nixon declared the “War on Drugs,” to about 2.3 million in 2007. In 2008 alone, 1.5 million people were arrested in total for drug offenses, with a third of those put into prison. In Maine in 2006, according to ONDCP statistics, there were 2,372 arrests for marijuana possession.

A lot of effort and resources have gone into this “war,” and as The Economist has reported harsh laws don’t seem to matter one way or the other in overall drug use. “There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer…” “…harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates.”

For this reason, a shift in attitude has been gaining momentum, particularly in the United States, away from punishment and toward treatment for many drug offenses. The establishment of drug courts to sift violent offenders from users is evidence of this shift, as is greater acceptance of the beneficial medical use of marijuana. More evidence of this comes in the work done by the journalist Walter Cronkite, who recognized the failure of the drug war, witnessed increasing corruption of public officials, and the scourge of drug use, and lent his name and reputation to the organization, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. This international organization with over 13,000 members in 76 countries describes itself in an online video Walter Cronkite said was a “must see”: www.leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=Content&pid=28

Time, in an April 2009 article, estimated that a 10 percent California tax on the $14 billion marijuana industry in the state could yield $1.4 billion in revenue, plus additional revenue from jobs in cultivation, packaging, marketing and advertising if marijuana were legalized. Legalization would likely, many argue, create an economic sea-change affecting trade in guns heading south and drugs heading north. Given the issues involved: compassionate treatment of the ill, the economic losses and potential gains, and the graft and horrific violence of unregulated production, marketing and distribution, it may be time to think more creatively about the problem.

The council should give thought to promoting personal responsibility, especially as the growing acceptance of medical marijuana is clearly based on compassion for those seeking relief from pain and illness. Folks who find relief from their treatments or illness from marijuana will likely obtain what they need whether a dispensary comes to Windham or not. Most feel they should be able to without the added fear of fines or arrest. Cigarettes and alcohol, much more dangerous health-affecting, mind-altering substances, are readily available, even to teens in spite of our best efforts. Denying the sick an herbal remedy that has medicinal value – anti-inflammatory, anti-hypertensive, pain-relieving, cancer preventing – and has been used by people for those properties for centuries while allowing cigarettes and alcohol sales seems, well, a bit contradictory.

Steve Demetriou lives in Windham.