LEGALIZE IT

"You bet I did," newly elected New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg smiles down from billboards and posters going up in the Big Apple. "And I enjoyed it."

Is he talking about earning billions of dollars on Wall Street? Flying his company helicopter? Canoodling with society dames as one of the richest single guys in New York?

Nope, the thing that Bloomberg remembers with such enthusiasm is smoking pot. Seems that, in an interview with New York magazine last year, Bloomberg was asked the question that every politician now has to answer in the post-Clinton era: "Have you ever smoked marijuana?" Reporters, of course, now routinely ask the question because they’re hoping for another howler like Clinton’s "I didn’t inhale" line, which enjoyed the same general credibility as a convicted Mafioso asserting that he’s in the "waste management" business.

(Actually, I was one of the few people that believed that Clinton actually didn’t inhale. To me, it perfectly summed up his character: he desperately wanted to be cool, hip, and cutting edge, but he couldn’t bear to actually go all the way for fear of hurting his political career. But I digress.)

Anyway, Bloomberg, to his credit, didn’t try to weasel like Clinton. Nor did he pull a Dubbya and refuse to answer (thus simply adding grist to the rumor mill). He ‘fessed up like a man. And the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) took notice. They’re spending some $50,000 plastering the city with pictures of Hizzoner’s mug with the famous quote appearing in a cartoon balloon above his head and the caption "It’s NORML to smoke pot." Radio ads and a full page ad in the New York Times are to follow. The idea of the campaign is to urge the city to stop arresting and jailing people for smoking marijuana.

"Millions of people smoke marijuana today," said NORML Executive Director Keith Stroup at a midtown Manhattan news conference. "They come from all walks of life, and that includes your own mayor." Well, Bloomberg didn’t actually say that he was smoking today. But frankly, after dealing all day with New York’s contentious citizens, horrendous traffic, and tottering infrastructure not to mention to ongoing World Trade Center cleanup, who could blame the guy if he locked himself in the mayor’s office at the end of the day, kicked back and lit up a big ol’ bomber? Not me.

Those who were hoping for a more mellow attitude towards reefer from Hizzoner, however, are bound for disappointment. "I think that we should enforce the laws as they are in the Police Department" Bloomberg has said. "We'll do so vigorously." He also has said that he's "not thrilled they're using my name" to get attention, but suggested he can't do much about it. "I suppose there's that First Amendment that gets in the way of me stopping it," Bloomberg said. (Darn that pesky First Amendment)!

At first I thought, "Eh, just another hypocrite, trying to bust people for doing the things he used to do." But then I thought, what’s really so different about Bloomberg? I mean, there are a lot of us who did not always, shall we say, just say "no." Now, as grownups, some of us are tasked with enforcing the law, some of us have to explain it to others, and some of us just have to discuss drug use with our kids. So how do you avoid hypocrisy?

It’s another example of how screwy things get in our arbitrary classification of some mood altering substances as acceptable and others as not. I say ‘arbitrary’ because the line doesn’t seem to be drawn on the basis of actual harm. Alcohol-related deaths (105,000 annually, according to the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependency) far outweigh those from marijuana smoking (ummm…none, at least none that I’ve ever heard of.) But pot is illegal and alcohol can be bought from the state government in North Carolina. As for the argument that marijuana is a "gateway drug", one that leads to harder drugs, the same can be said of our state’s main legal cash crop, tobacco. The National Institute on Drug Abuse found that 12 to 17 year olds who smoke cigarettes are 14 times more likely to abuse alcohol and 32 times more likely to use cocaine than their nonsmoking peers. So where’s the push to outlaw tobacco? Anyone?

The argument that a single puff on a joint will lead to inevitable degeneracy and decline has also been overtaken by events. Not only Bloomberg and Clinton, but Al Gore, New York Governor George Pataki, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have all admitted to a burning a doobie or two in their pasts. Somewhere in that list, I know you find a former stoner to fit your taste. But hey, imagine what they could have accomplished had they never lit up.

The way to avoid hypocrisy is simple. Face reality. Stop wasting police time and public money on enforcement of laws that even the country’s top leaders cheerfully admit to having broken. It’s time to legalize it.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.