海角大神

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has become the lightning rod for a fresh, national dialogue over legal marijuana. He says the government鈥檚 war on drugs has failed and so marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol.

鈥淔olks, we've gotta do something about this. We've just got to change the laws. We cannot allow this to continue. It is sapping our vitality. Think of this great land of freedom,鈥� he said last week as host of 鈥�The 700 Club鈥� on the 海角大神 Broadcasting Network based in Virginia Beach, Va.

Marijuana advocates, not surprisingly, are applauding the move while antidrug groups are attacking Mr. Robertson鈥檚 credibility, saying he has made several 鈥渟trange remarks鈥� in the past five years about prayer, tornadoes, and homosexuals.

Robertson鈥檚 status as a high-profile conservative, however, makes his remarks symbolically important and indicative of wider shifts, say some academic observers.聽

鈥淗e鈥檚 wrong about many things, but the fact that he is someone who usually represents the extreme conservative point of view makes the coming legalization debate more wide open now,鈥� says Robert MacCoun a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, who follows marijuana laws.

Noting that Colorado and Washington have ballot measures this fall that would allow people over 21 to possess a small amount of marijuana and allow for commercial pot sales, Professor MacCoun says the Robertson comment helps break up polarized discussions.

鈥淲e can now have a more grown up discussion about what are the tools in the tool box 鈥� rather than just hyperlatives hurled at each side from the extremes,鈥� he says.

That could include current politics. 聽

鈥淚t will be interesting to see how the tea party and presidential candidates will treat what Robertson is saying,鈥� says Robert Langran, a political scientist at Villanova University in Philadelphia. 鈥淒epending on what Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum say and do, this has the potential of creating another rift in the Republican Party.鈥�

Noting that America makes up 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of jailed prisoners,聽Robertson said: 鈥淲e've said, 'We're conservative, we're tough on crime.' That's baloney. It's costing us billions and billions of dollars. We need to scrub the federal code and the state codes and take away these criminal penalties.鈥�

Antidrug groups take issue with Robertson's judgment.

鈥淐learly he is ill-informed about the drug war,鈥� says Calvina Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation. She says in 1978, 58 percent of high school seniors had used an illicit drug in the past year, compared with 28 percent in 1992 鈥� more than a 50 percent drop.

The numbers have crept back up to 40 percent, a trend she attributes both to the 16 states and Washington, D.C., which have legalized the medical use of marijuana, as well as the big push in聽California聽last fall to legalize recreational use through Proposition 19.

But she adds, 鈥淲e are still well below the 1978 usage rate, hardly a complete failure.鈥澛�

For Paul Armentano, deputy director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the recent trends relate to a bigger picture. Polls have been shifting for three decades, showing that voters of all ages and both parties support regulating cannabis like alcohol, he says. At least 70 percent of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, he says.

鈥淲hen a person like Pat Robertson realizes that the immorality of jailing nonviolent marijuana users, keeping medicine away from the sick, and contributing to murder and mayhem in Latin America is far, far worse that the supposed immorality of using marijuana, we have reached a positive turning point in the debate," adds聽Morgan Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project聽in an e-mail. 鈥淲e are starting to see more people's moral judgments aligning themselves with the realities of marijuana prohibition.鈥�

Critics, however, worry that Robertson's comments only hurt antidrug efforts.聽聽

鈥淚f you work and live in the world of addiction, a world where you have your sleeves rolled up and are dealing with the true impact that drugs have on society, you just may have something to say to people like Pat Robertson, who so cavalierly come out with a statement like this,鈥� says Richard Taite, founder of Cliffside聽Malibu, an addiction treatment center, in an e-mail.

础诲诲蝉听Robert DuPont, president of the Institute for Behavior and Health:聽鈥淚 think he鈥檚 acting out of his sense of compassion and thinks he is being reasonable, but that he is drinking the Kool-Aid of the pro-marijuana forces.鈥澛�

Recently, Robertson said that God could have stopped the tornadoes that swept the Midwest if more people had been praying. He also said in December that homosexual people can "un-acquire" the lifestyle.聽