On March 16, 2000 Patrick Dorismond and a friend stepped out of the Wakamba Bar on Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue. Dorismond apparently felt insulted after a stranger asked him where he could find marijuana. A dispute reportedly erupted. When the would-be pot buyer yelled for help, one of his associates stepped forward and allegedly shot Dorismond fatally in the chest.

Of course, the supposed drug buyers really were undercover NYPD officers. Their effort to entrap an innocent, unarmed man in a narcotics sting operation caused his violent, untimely death. Eric Adams of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement laments that Dorismond could “be killed for saying no to drugs.”

The war on drugs is not a cold war. There are casualties and there are costs. Between 1990 and 1999 alone, federal anti-drug law-enforcement activities have cost taxpayers $81 billion, and that’s not counting state and city funds. This immense budget has done nothing the curb America’s appetite for marijuana: far from it. Among the thousands jailed annually are suffering medical patients, including paraplegic Deborah Quinn, who was sentenced to a year in a secure unit for possession of a few ounces of pot. Quinn’s incarceration, which had to be carried out under special medical conditions, cost taxpayers $126,000, an amount that may have been better spent keeping four murderers locked away for the same year.

Billions are spent each year on prisons alone. The US government builds them continuously to support the nation’s swelling prison population. Billions more are spent on negative marketing information, anti-drug messages in shows like “ER” and “90210” where the federal drug office personally re-wrote some of the scripts. The media is rich with such enforced messages, a fact that begs the question; could the money have been spent in a more constructive way?

The legalization of marijuana would do a great deal to alleviate the fear and very real danger posed by our own police. The estimated 35 million adults who use marijuana would be freed from fear, and the rest of America would be free from a looming and oppressive governmental force. American taxpayers would be saved billions per year, money that could be used to stimulate the economy or provide relief and rehabilitation to those who need it. The black market in marijuana would be completely eradicated, denying cash to criminal groups who profit by its sale, including, as a certain television ad points out, terrorist organizations. Prisons would be left open for the incarceration of violent criminals, and police would be able to concentrate on organized crime and the distribution of hard drugs. It is hard to deny that the overall effects of legalization are positive.

Prohibition of marijuana has done little to nothing to prevent those who wish to smoke it from obtaining it, and yet millions of Americans live in fear of their own government every day. Who will be the next casualty of the war on drugs? Our families, our tax money, our freedoms and our lives have already been compromised too far.