According to "Frontline," the latest government surveys show that 70 million Americans have smoked marijuana.

Twenty-five percent of people in federal prisons are serving time for cannabis crimes.

Of marijuana arrests, 85 percent were for possession. Only 15 percent were for dealing.

A Kaiser Permanente-based study showed the risk of mortality associated with marijuana use was lower than that associated with tobacco cigarette smoking.

Tobacco-related illnesses cause more than 400,000 deaths a year; alcohol abuse accounts for 50,000 to 100,000 deaths a year.

No one has ever died from an overdose of marijuana.

State and federal governments spend $15 billion a year enforcing marijuana prohibition.

These facts lead any honest searcher for truth to the following actions:

Spend the additional $800 billion a year for the enforcement required to stop all marijuana users, build more prisons and put the rest of those 70 million pot-smoking, subversive, pinko rock'n'roll, hippie taxpayers behind bars.

Next, ban cigarettes and begin the war on nicotine, for which we'll need to borrow an additional $900 billion annually and quadruple the number of prisons. But it's worth it. These victories will give us the moral courage we need to wage the final battle . . . the war on beer.