Phil Murphy, the Democratic candidate for governor, is prepared to follow the lead of states like Colorado by legalizing marijuana in New Jersey and taxing its sale. His Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, would go only half as far. She wants to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, but would continue to arrest and imprison those who sell it.

So, which is the wiser course?

The first reflex, when faced with a dramatic change like this, is to dip a toe in the water before jumping in. Legislators say that Guadagno's half-step would be far more likely to win approval next year.

But when it comes to America's ruinous war on drugs, the baby step that Guadagno proposes is simply not enough. This is a time to seize the moment, and to join the eight states that have already made the jump.

Start with the violence on our city streets. If the illegal marijuana trade continues, as it would under Guadagno's plan, then so will the violence that comes with it. Dealers will still fight for turf in our cities, innocent people will still be shot dead by stray bullets, and working families will continue to be terrorized in their own neighborhoods.

Guadagno, a former sheriff who presents herself as a law-and-order candidate, offers an approach that drug dealers would celebrate. Decriminalizing marijuana would no doubt increase the demand for it; but the trade would be left in the hands of criminals. It would be a boon for the gangs and thugs who profit from this trade.

And let's talk about race. New Jersey's prison population is more skewed by race than any in the country, according to data collected by Sentencing Project in 2016. African-Americans are imprisoned here at a rate 12 times that of whites, more than double the national gap.

Marijuana arrests, which outnumber arrests for all violent crimes combined, help explain that gap. New Jersey's notorious school-zone laws, in place for decades, imposed mandatory sentences for dealers arrested within 1,000 feet of a school. That essentially set up two-tiers of penalties, one for dealers in the white suburbs, and a far harsher one for dealers in cities, where almost all the turf is within 1,000 feet of a school.

The law has been softened to give judges more discretion, but thousands of black men remain its victims, their lives derailed by a law that was flatly racist, with blacks and Latinos accounting for 96 percent of those arrested under its terms. Even now, the rates of marijuana arrests for blacks is more than four times the rate for whites, according to a study by the ACLU, while rates of marijuana use are roughly the same.

Finally, the money. Legal sales of marijuana will produce tax revenues this state desperately needs, money that could be used to expand treatment for addicts of much stronger drugs. Murphy puts the number at $300 million a year, but even half that would be most welcome.

In the debate Thursday, Guadagno raised one serious objection, arguing that "marijuana-related" traffic deaths in Colorado have jumped by 48 percent since legalization. So, let's take a close look.

The 48 percent figure comes from a study published by the Governors Highway Safety Association, one that was paid for by a non-profit group funded by alcohol distillers. It counted the number of drivers with traces of marijuana in their systems at the time of the crash. But it did not conclude the drivers were high at the time of the accidents, conceding that traces of marijuana can linger in the system for days, even weeks.

There is good reason for skepticism. Two more recent studies reached a dramatically different conclusion. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety studied three states that had legalized marijuana, and found the rate of accidents were 3 percent higher than in neighboring states that had not. A second study published in the American Journal of Public Health found no increase at all.

The concern about car crashes is a valid one, especially since police have no good roadside test for marijuana intoxication, as they do for alcohol. But Guadagno's red alarm is way overblown. Study after study has found that alcohol presents a far greater danger on our roads.

The prohibition against marijuana has been a tragic failure, just as the prohibition against alcohol was. Surveys show that most Americans have smoked marijuana. The ban has left blood on our streets, filled our prisons with non-violent offenders, and pushed billions of dollars onto the black market. Guadagno's baby step would change none of that.

Murphy is right on this one. Let's make New Jersey the 9th state to call a cease-fire in the misguided war on pot.