Lost in the (fragrant) smoke screen

For the traditional 4/20 smokeout at the University of Colorado in Boulder, roughly 10,000 people showed up to defy marijuana prohibition and call for changes in the law.

With all of that highly illegal sweet-smelling smoke hovering over the crowd, did police continue their past efforts to harass, identify and arrest scofflaws?

Nope -- not a chance.

Officers in the past have gone to great lengths to catch people in the illegal act of smoking pot on 4/20.

In 2006, CU police dispatched undercover photographers to snap pictures of smokers. Photos of 150 alleged offenders then were posted on the department’s Web site, and witnesses were offered $50 to positively identify the suspects — who then were ticketed. Another year, smokers on Farrand were doused with sprinklers.

“We can’t do the same thing year after year,” [CU police Cmdr. Brad] Wiesley said hours before Sunday’s smoking began. “So I doubt we’ll do anything like the pictures. ... There’s no way our 12 to 15 officers are going to be able to deal with a crowd of 10,000. We just can’t do strong enforcement when we’re outnumbered 700 or 800 to one.”

Roughly 5,000 people gathered at the University of California - Santa Cruz for a similar event. Rich Westphal, task force commander with the Santa Cruz County Narcotics Enforcement Team, called the mass display of civil disobedience "a moral slap in the face to the cause" of drug prohibition.

That's right. Mass civil disobedience creates a reality of its own. The police either have to massively escalate their efforts and expense in an effort to counter the non-compliers -- and probably fail anyway -- or else give up. Police in Boulder and Santa Cruz quite sensibly chose to step back and leave the crowds to their peaceful, albeit illegal, pursuits.

There's a lesson here for opponents of any law. The more people they can convince to join them in disobedience of the law, the more difficult it becomes to enforce the law. Eventually, the disagreeable regulation becomes nothing more than an annoying technicality to be ignored by opponents and enforcers alike.