In our view: End the overkill for marijuana
The Daily Herald

You don't swat flies with 16-pound sledge hammers. The hammer might kill the fly, but it will also do a lot of damage to the furniture.

The so-called war on drugs involves similar overkill that needlessly, and expensively, puts people in prison for minor marijuana offenses. A big part of the problem is mandatory sentences, statutes designed to remove discretion from judges in an effort to show we're tough on drug dealers. Instead, we often end up sending low-level marijuana offenders to prison when a less expensive therapy program would be more appropriate.

At the root of overkill in drug sentencing is how marijuana is classified. As illicit drugs go, marijuana is innocuous. You don't hear of people becoming violent after smoking pot, though at the same time you wouldn't want them flying commercial aircraft, driving cars or operating heavy machinery.

Yet the legal classification of marijuana puts it on par with LSD, heroin and mescaline -- Schedule I drugs that are defined by statute as highly addictive and lacking any medicinal value.

But statutory definitions don't always reflect reality, and they certainly don't in the case of marijuana. The classification ignores the positive benefits of marijuana's active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which eases symptoms of glaucoma and enables cancer and AIDS patients to overcome nausea and regain their appetites.

By contrast, methamphetamine, which any Utah law enforcement officer will tell you is far more dangerous and damaging than marijuana -- both in its manufacturing and use -- is a Schedule II drug. Meth is in the same category as Lortab, Oxycontin and PCP, all of which have some medicinal value.

Because of marijuana's classification, crimes involving it often result in harsher sentences than is really warranted.

Mere possession of less than an ounce of marijuana in Utah can land a person in jail for up to six months and result in fines up to $1,000. Selling any amount can get you up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

. It's just not particularly dangerous. While it has been argued that marijuana is a gateway to other more serious drugs, marijuana in and of itself appears less harmful than alcohol. Unlike the meth lab operator, a marijuana grower doesn't turn his home and yard into a toxic waste dump that requires a hazardous materials team to dismantle and decontaminate.

We're not suggesting that marijuana be legalized, though that would not be catastrophic. What we are saying is that punishments should be proportional to the damage, or potential damage, inflicted on society. People may have gotten a little overwrought about marijuana during the youth rebellions of the 1960s and '70s.

Locking people up for marijuana crimes only adds to prison overcrowding, which can result in some truly bad people being released to make room for the new arrivals. Incarceration doesn't help with rehabilitation efforts either.

A better approach is to refer low-level marijuana offenders to drug courts, with an emphasis on rehabilitation. The courts would save money: It costs between $20,000 and $50,000 to incarcerate an offender for a year, while a drug court system only costs $2,500-$4,000 per year.

Marijuana should be reclassified to be viewed more like alcohol and tobacco, which its effects on a user more closely match. In Utah, illegally serving someone more than one alcoholic drink is only a class-C misdemeanor, which is half the punishment that a marijuana user gets for possessing less than 1 ounce of the stuff.

It's just not worth it. We should reserve legal sledge hammers for bigger bugs and save ourselves a lot of money.