Civil disagreements, with Lynne Varner and Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Times editorial board, is a feature of the Ed Cetera blog. Today the colleagues debate marijuana legalization.

Lynne Varner, left, and Bruce Ramsey

Lynne Varner: Bruce, your column about marijuana's imminent legalization was interesting. Did you come back from your visit to the cannabis-growing farm craving KFC's new "Doubledown" burger?

And the art next to your piece: Is that Lady Justice sprawled on the floor beside her scales, looking ... um ... stoned?

I could rest my case here but let's move on.

I'm against legalization of marijuna. I support limited marijuana use for medical purposes, but the drug ought to remain illegal. The problem is the debate is shrouded in a fuzziness that obscures any image sharper than say, a return to Woodstock. Being okay with marijuana use means being okay with legalizing a product controlled by global drug cartels and protected by any means necessary, including violence.

I was listening to an interview with novelist and essayist Anne Lamott, a once close authority on marijuana if you get my drift. Lamott has written a book about substance-abusing teenagers, Imperfect Birds. Challenging kids these days are acess to alcohol, prescription pills and weed that is very different, much more potent, than the pot fondly remembered by Lamott's generation.

I'm just not ready, Bruce, to add marijuana to the list of harmful but legal substances that can be found in a household. I'm not ready to have to sidestep secondhand pot smoke. But most of all, I'm not morally ready to write off scores of young people, mostly poor and people of color, who will not so easily shift from recreational drug use to model members of society. These are the people most likely to get caught in a downward spiral of drug use for which - in these draconian budgetary times - there isn't a safety net.

Bruce Ramsey: Lynne, I'm not arguing that marijuana is an unalloyed good. It's a drag on industriousness and ambition, and for anyone who wants to get on in the world, I don't recommend making a lifestyle of it. But some people want a laid-back life. Some are retired. Some want to smoke it after work. Just because I don't doesn't mean I ought to penalize others. People ought to ask themselves what gives them the right to do this.

You worry about "a product controlled by global drug cartels and used to fatten profit margins in inner cities." Marijuana is controlled by criminals because it's illegal. It has big profit margins because it's illegal. If you want to take it out of the hands of criminals and lower the profit margin in the business, make it legal. When is the last time you heard of a murder among beer distributors?

You worry about it being available to teens. It is available now. In my time as a late teenager--long ago--it was easier to get marijuana than beer. If a store sold you any beer, and you were under 21, it was in trouble. I worked in a 7-Eleven, and that was the No. 1 thing the owner told me not to do--and not because he was so deeply moral, but because he didn't want to lose the right to sell beer. So beer was difficult. Marijuana was easy. Because it was 100 percent illegal, no one in the marijuana business "carded" his customers.

If you want to control a commodity, legalize it--which is what this proposed statewide initiative does. Get marijuana above board, where the cop and the tax man can watch it. Sell marijuana at QFC and Starbucks--or, if it makes you feel better, at the Washington State Liquor Stores. You can tax it, too. Look at how much we tax cigarettes. Imagine a marijuana tax. Maybe we could get the pot smokers to pay for light rail.

Lynne Varner: What about the schools? Marijuana's impact on learning and memory scares me. Here are some factoids on the chemical components of marijuana and why this drug isn't the harmless party aid many think it is. And this warning from the Surgeon General. I know, I know, its cool to disagree with authority figures. I'm just putting it out there.

Bruce Ramsey: I'm not suggesting that the schools change anything in regard to it. I'm suggesting that it be sold by lawful merchants, who have to pay taxes and follow rules.