Denver voters, on Nov. 2, approved by a 56% majority an act to change the city’s marijuana laws. Supporters of the initiative campaigned to legally equate marijuana to alcohol. The new legislation allows adults over the age of 21 to legally posses up to an ounce of marijuana. Similar to alcohol laws, it is illegal to drive under the influence of marijuana, and to be intoxicated in public.

In 2003, an initiative was taken in Seattle which ordered police to make marijuana arrests their lowest priority; a similar measure was taken in Oakland. University of Michigan hometown, Ann Arbor, like several other college towns, took a hint from their neighbors in Canada, decriminalizing pot.

These marginal reforms to a long-standing bureaucratic absurdity are hardly a sign of real change. In the city of Denver, although it legal to posses less than an ounce of marijuana, it remains illegal under state and federal statutes; law enforcement officials can still make arrests under different jurisdictions. It also remains illegal to grow and sell marijuana, so no matter what, if someone posses pot, an illegal act was committed at some point. The major argument of SAFER (Safer Alternatives for Enjoyable Recreation), a pro-pot activist group, was that marijuana is safer than alcohol as a substance. If people used pot instead of booze, they claimed, domestic violence would decrease and alcohol-related death, from automobile accidents for example, would decrease.

The average politically-minded stoner can rattle off a list of historical myths to explain the illegality of marijuana. William Randolph Hearst condemning the use of cannabis throughout his publishing empire in the 30’s because he owned large cotton producing plantations and hoped to discourage the competition of hemp fiber. Or that the military pressured the outlawing of pot because too many sailors were going to the city and getting high at jazz clubs, the initial hotbeds of pot use. Some might even tell you that such propaganda films as Reefer Madness, released in 1936, the year before the criminalization of pot, were sponsored by the government when there has never been any real evidence of this; it was actually made by a family-oriented church group.

These erroneous, wives’ tales are no more than romanticized lore, not legal justification for change. Realistically, marijuana could be legalized (or at least decriminalized), with not only minimal criminal repercussions, but with substantial economic and social benefit.

When alcohol was prohibited by the eighteenth amendment, an era was born of mafia activity that thrived on bootlegging and illegal importation. The prohibition of alcohol, in effect, increased crime and violence. If marijuana was legalized, not only could the government take in massive revenue from taxation, but legal privatization would apply the basic rules of a capitalist competition, transforming marijuana into a legitimate commodity. Prices would drop, quality would improve and, most importantly, safety precautions could be taken. If made legal, corporations abiding by government and private standards could enact systems of making marijuana safer and easier to monitor. The FDA could control negative health effects.

There is the old argument that legalization of substances will make them more accessible to minors: the most horrifying of all evils. Actually, it is the outlawing of marijuana that makes minors so vulnerable to it. Because drug dealers have no law to abide by, and are already doing something illegal, they in essence have nothing to lose by selling to minors. It is easier for the average high school student to get pot than alcohol. If the corner drug store could legally sell marijuana to responsible adults, dealers who would sell illegally to minors would be crushed by the capitalist rules of competition. It is therefore laws against marijuana use that create its most negative use.