Last month, we pointed you to a story in the Provo, Utah Daily Herald on the fallacies of the drug war. Today, that same paper has an excellent editorial calling for a complete re-assessment of the state's marijuana laws.

The punishments clearly do not reflect the true effect of marijuana in society. It's just not particularly dangerous. While it has been argued that marijuana is a gateway to other more serious drugs, marijuana in and of itself appears less harmful than alcohol. Unlike the meth lab operator, a marijuana grower doesn't turn his home and yard into a toxic waste dump that requires a hazardous materials team to dismantle and decontaminate.

We're not suggesting that marijuana be legalized, though that would not be catastrophic. What we are saying is that punishments should be proportional to the damage, or potential damage, inflicted on society. People may have gotten a little overwrought about marijuana during the youth rebellions of the 1960s and '70s.

Locking people up for marijuana crimes only adds to prison overcrowding, which can result in some truly bad people being released to make room for the new arrivals. Incarceration doesn't help with rehabilitation efforts either.

A better approach is to refer low-level marijuana offenders to drug courts, with an emphasis on rehabilitation. The courts would save money: It costs between $20,000 and $50,000 to incarcerate an offender for a year, while a drug court system only costs $2,500-$4,000 per year.

Marijuana should be reclassified to be viewed more like alcohol and tobacco, which its effects on a user more closely match. In Utah, illegally serving someone more than one alcoholic drink is only a class-C misdemeanor, which is half the punishment that a marijuana user gets for possessing less than 1 ounce of the stuff.

It's just not worth it. We should reserve legal sledge hammers for bigger bugs and save ourselves a lot of money.

Read the whole thing here.