In support of California's initiative to legalize marijuana



I support the November ballot initiative because our country's long drug war is a disaster and there is an alternative that is better for our health, safety and democratic process.



People are dying.



Nearly 30,000 people have been killed around our southern border since the Mexican government, with massive American support, escalated its wars against the cartels in 2006.



There were over 112,000 drug overdose deaths in the US between 1999 and 2005 alone.



And the drug consumption continues. It's an unwinnable war.



California leads America and America leads the world in mass incarceration. Nearly 25 percent of the world's inmates are locked up in American institutions, the largest percentage of them on drug-related offenses. In 1980, there were some 40,000 Americans in prison on drug charges, today there are an estimated 500,000 at any given time.



It's an unaffordable war as well.



The first Nixon budget for the Drug War was $15 million in 1970. President Obama's 2010 budget is $15 billion, two-thirds for enforcement. According to the AP, American taxpayers have shelled out one trillion in tax dollars over 40 years for the drug war.



Turning this unaffordable, unwinnable war around will not be easy. But it is possible, step by step, as successful medical marijuana campaigns and the rise in public support for drug treatment has shown.



The next step available to Californians is the marijuana initiative on the ballot this November. Some say it's not the right time, but now is the time to put those reservations aside. This is an opportunity to debate the failed drug war with millions of undecided voters, and there is a chance to win.



The war is a permanent quagmire. I think we must shift from a military model to a medical one. My argument is as follows:



- We can learn from the failure of Prohibition and the flaws in the legalization of alcohol which followed in the 1930s. One the one hand, Prohibition vastly increased violence in the streets as ethnic gangs fought over distribution with fists and tommy-guns, not unlike contemporary turf rivalries with even higher-powered weapons. With the end of Prohibition came a sharp reduction in gang violence. But legalization of alcohol also legitimized the habit. empowered and enriched a special interest lobby for liquor interests, deepened an addiction problem and causing more deaths and injuries due to alcoholism, traffic casualties, etc.