THE GREAT DEBATE! IS IT TIME 2 LEGALIZE WEED?

BILL: I was just reading that California has a budget deficit of $26 billion. There's never any lack of money to prosecute and jail some poor dumb back alley biker who committed no crime but wanting to get high -- but California is closing public libraries, and may even have to go to a four-day school week.

DR. DAVE: I suspect this rant is going to be about the bill just introduced in Sacramento to de-criminalize marijuana; to tax and regulate it like alcohol?

BILL: Which would earn California nearly $1.4 billion annually, according to state tax officials. No wonder Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has publicly called for a large-scale study of legalization. Didn't we learn anything from Prohibition? You can't legislate against "sin."

DR. DAVE: I agree that anyone who really wants to smoke pot can get it on almost any street corner. But Bill, you're talking about a very flammable mix of an addictive chemical and Madison Avenue. If you legalize marijuana, the big tobacco companies will package and advertise it, investing it with sports star and movie star glamour. Given how much Hollywood would enable a harmless view of marijuana, there would be no shortage of prominent icons to hawk the virtues of R.J. Reynolds Panama Red compared to Phillip Morris' Columbian Gold.

BILL: Outside of your outdated pot brands, who is to say use of marijuana is all that bad? I never thought it worth walking around the corner for myself, but Jennifer Anniston says she and Brad Pitt always smoked it in moderation. Sounds to me very much like Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Banker having a martini before dinner.

DR. DAVE: And given Brad's well publicized penchant for wearing pro-Pot T Shirts around movie sets, I would guess he could become the Marlboro Man of cannabis culture. And that's what is so incendiary -- millions of health-minded people, who would not dream of smoking it now exactly because it is illegal, would take it up. You'd soon see the results of that, starting with auto traffic deaths alone.

BILL: I've been talking to someone who agrees with you -- Dr. Don Mullaney, the head of SeaSide Palm Beach and Behavioral Health of the Palm Beaches. He reminded me that until 1906, "Coca-Cola contained cocaine and was legally sold as 'an intellectual's' beverage. Wines containing cocaine were extremely popular too, especially Vin Mariani, which managed to get endorsements from three popes, sixteen heads of states and 8000 physicians. So let's not forget that legalization could mean a return to all that." Dave, I'm not saying that legalizing pot will be an unalloyed blessing. I am saying that modern life often presents us with choices between the bad and the worse.

DR. DAVE: Let me add this. Back at the turn of the 20th Century, around 1900, the Bayer Aspirin Company came up with a cure for morphine addiction. With the trademark name of Heroin, the stuff, like Coca Cola, literally flew off the pharmacy shelves. In the last 100 years, we have hit a brick wall in trying to put that genie back in the bottle.

BILL: Is there any simple rule you follow in changing approaches to drugs or addiction?

DR. DAVE: I always defer to that old axiom my father, the Family Doctor, used to espouse when considering something "new" -- "First of all, do no harm."

BILL: The prime ethical motto of the medical profession. Doc, I get your drift -- that you prefer to live by the health care model that says, "it is often better to do nothing, rather than doing something that risks doing more harm than good."

DR. DAVE: As we've noted in other columns, the first foray into legalization, with medical marijuana, has been far from successful.

BILL: Dave, you know the old saying, "Anyone convinced against his will is unconvinced still"? Your anti arguments appeal to my brain. In my heart I know legalization is coming.