When the Seattle Times last week came out with an editorial endorsing the decriminalization of the use and possession of marijuana, I squirmed a bit. I wanted to see their view as enlightened and had I not been a reader of that paper for about 50 years, might have been able view the endorsement that way.

But after mulling their support for the legislation sponsored by our own Mary Lou Dickerson, I began to wonder where was the courage when it mattered, in 1970 and after and long before hundreds of thousands of kids got tossed in jail for having a baggie of weed under the car seat.

A limp me-too piece by the Times.

We have lived long enough to see the way our peers and their offspring have dealt with the availability of marijuana. And we have come to view it as on a par with booze. Some people can handle it. Some cannot.

Some think legalizing the sale of marijuana (through state liquor stores, which could also control the taxation of it) is a program that would put a lot of stoned people on the roads behind the wheel. I don't see that. People who smoke weed (not crack or other controlled substances) are doing it now. Largely with impunity. In the late sixties, when I was a wanna-be hippie --red, white and blue polyester bell bottoms, skin-tight knit collarless sweater, Beatle boots--I puffed the funny-funny weed a couple of times.

But it lost its charm for me (first because I could not afford it) but also because I learned that music is beautiful even you aren't loaded, that watching your toddler struggle to take his first steps, to feel the silky skin of a Steelhead trout, to dig in the earth with your fingers to plant a tulip bulb, to gape at the fulminating clouds of a thunderstorm, to absorb the dry heat of a wood fire on a cold night can all be done sober.

The Times piece is larded with second-hand logic.

Still, I agree with the premise that marijuana could be (not should be) legalized and controlled the way alcohol is handled by the state. It could be a tremendous boost in taxes to be used for education. Of course, I see the irony in using tax money derived from the sales of a drug. But what is alcohol? What is caffeine? We are taxing them now.

I see the Dickerson bill as a win for the state economy. I am not persuaded that decriminalization will lead to loss of jobs in the law enforcement sector because cops and prosecutors won't have enough to do. That is a specious claim.
Is marijuana a gateway drug? Sure. And so is alcohol, and which is even more readily accessible to people.

In high school, we watched the film Reefer Madness, where convicts, deprived of access to marijuana, went bug-eyed 'cold turkey', hallucinating and wildly shrieking behind bars. It frankly scared me.

Not a kid anymore, my view has changed. I doubt the law will pass here because of Washington's blue-nose tradition. But I also doubt the use of marijuana will be significantly affected.