The United States should scrap its war on drugs, legalize marijuana and radically change the way it handles drug offenders, outspoken Gov. Gary E. Johnson (R-N.M.) said in a speech this weekend.

“The war on drugs is an absolute, miserable failure,” he said.

Discussing national drug reform policy before a standing-room-only crowd in Sever Hall on Saturday, Johnson said drugs like marijuana should be treated just like tobacco or alcohol.

If drugs were legalized—and then taxed and regulated by the federal government—fatalities due to drug abuse would decrease, he said, much as drinking-related deaths fell after the repeal of Prohibition in the 1930s.

“Overdose is killing us because of prohibition,” he said. “It is prohibition that is increasing death, disease and crime.”

It should always be illegal to sell drugs to children and commit crimes while under the influence of controlled substances. But Johnson said he does not believe the government should regulate citizens’ private behavior, including whether they do drugs in their own homes.

At age 49, Johnson participates in an endurance competition called the Ironman and said he plans to run the Boston Marathon this year. And as an athlete, he said, he does not advise the use of marijuana—or even other substances like alcohol and coffee.

“My message to my own children is, don’t do drugs,” he said. “But also, don’t drink. Don’t do sugar. Don’t do Coca-Cola.”

But he said he still supports decriminalization of marijuana. Even without messages advocating the use of marijuana, he said, about 800 million Americans would experiment with the drug during his lifetime.

He said laws and enforcement techniques discriminate against minority groups. Every year about 800,000 people are arrested on marijuana charges—half of them Hispanic, he said.

If drugs were legalized, formal government regulation would eliminate the chance that heroin or cocaine are laced with more dangerous chemicals, he added.

He also lambasted a Department of Education policy that allows college students who have been convicted of violent crimes to reapply for federal aid but not those convicted on drug violations. An amendment to this policy that would allow convicted drug offenders to reapply is currently under consideration in the House of Representatives, sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank ’61-’62 (D-Mass.).

Johnson criticized mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses, saying a bill he signed in New Mexico giving judges control over sentencing could serve as a model for drug policy reform.

Other measures from his state could contribute to larger reforms, Johnson said, such as syringe exchange laws, which could cut down on the spread of disease among intravenous drug users.

Johnson was joined in his attacks on current drug policies by Lester Grinspoon, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

“The war on drugs is a colossal failure, but it gallops on nonetheless,” Grinspoon said.

Grinspoon spoke in defense of marijuana’s soothing properties when used on a medical prescription. He said protease inhibitors, drugs that help combat AIDS, cause extreme nausea—and taking marijuana eliminates this side-effect and allows people afflicted with the disease to eat without discomfort.

But marijuana currently cannot be tested for medicinal purposes since it falls on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Schedule 1 list—for drugs that are considered to have no medical use.

Testing can only begin if it is moved onto the FDA’s Schedule 2, a classification for drugs that the agency believes might have medicinal value.

But since the cost of testing a drug could be as high as $800 million, Grinspoon said he did not think many drug companies would pay for the necessary tests. Marijuana is a plant—and therefore cannot be patented—so companies would be unlikely to help recoup their testing expenses, he said.

The forum was sponsored by The Harvard Coalition for Drug Policy Reform and the Institute of Politics.