Washington, DC: Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, along with co-sponsors Ron Paul (R-TX); Maurice Hinchey (D-NY); Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA); and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), will reintroduce legislation today to limit the federal government’s authority to arrest and prosecute minor marijuana offenders.
The measure, entitled an “Act to Remove Federal Penalties for Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults,” would eliminate federal penalties for the personal possession of up to 100 grams (over three and one-half ounces) of cannabis and for the not-for-profit transfer of up to one ounce of pot – making the prosecutions of these offenses strictly a state matter.
Under federal law, defendants found guilty of possessing small amounts of cannabis for their own personal use face up to one year imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.
Passage of this act would provide state lawmakers the choice to maintain their current penalties for minor marijuana offenses or eliminate them completely. Lawmakers would also have the option to explore legal alternatives to tax and regulate the adult use and distribution of cannabis free from federal interference.
To date, thirteen states have enacted laws ‘decriminalizing’ the possession of marijuana by adults. Minor marijuana offenders face a citation and small fine in lieu of a criminal arrest or time in jail.
“The federal government has much more important business to attend to than targeting, arresting and prosecuting adults who use marijuana responsibly,” NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said. “This is an issue that ought to be handled by the states, not the Feds.”
According to nationwide polls, three out of four voters believe that adults who possess marijuana should not face arrest or jail, and one out of two now say that cannabis should be regulated like alcohol.
“The US Congress has a definite choice,” said St. Pierre. “They can choose the path of compassion, fiscal responsibility, and common sense by supporting Barney Frank’s and Ron Paul’s efforts, or they can continue down America’s failed drug war path by endorsing Rep. Kirk’s draconian legislation. It is abundantly clear which direction the voters wish to go; will their elected officials follow?”
Additional information about the ‘Act to Remove Federal Penalties for Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults’ is available at NORML’s Take Action Center.
Even though California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has joined the calls for a debate on marijuana prohibition itself, there is still a lot of confusion about the legal status of the supposedly less controversial topic of “medical marijuana”.
On April 2nd the Associated Press reported that Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton “called on the City Council to speed up the drafting of stricter regulations on medical marijuana clinics, calling current state law ‘Looney Tunes’.” (Oddly, the story was reported on theSan Jose Mercury-News website, but the LA Times only covered it in a blog.)
Bratton was right, but for the wrong reasons. He claimed, “They pass a law, then they have no regulations as to how to enforce the darn thing and, as a result, we have hundreds of these locations selling drugs to every Tom, Dick and Harry.”
First, if the dispensaries are selling any “drug” other than cannabis, the police do not need any action by the LA City Counsel to raid them. Find any of them selling hard drugs, and the medical cannabis community will support closing down the offenders.
That is not a rhetorical point. It is important to note that one justification for the dispensary system is that it keeps medical cannabis users from having to go to “street dealers” in order to get their medicine. However, in the broader context of cannabis prohibition in general, the California medical marijuana dispensary system does the same thing that the Dutch cannabis “coffee shop” system has been doing for decades. The Dutch call it the “separation of the markets for soft and hard drugs.” One consequence of this “separation of the markets” is that the Dutch have a much lower use of hard drugs, especially heroin, among young people than does the US.
Second, the dispensaries are not selling to just anyone. They require a special form of identification that establishes the fact that a doctor has approved of the patient’s use of cannabis. (That is all that is required by state law, and – critically – all that is allowed by Federal law.)
“Street dealers” do not require any identification, and most teens say it is easier to get marijuana (on the street) than it is to get alcohol from licensed stores.
14 May 2009
——- Kerlikowske Says Analogy Is Counterproductive; Shift Aligns With Administration Preference for Treatment Over Incarceration
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.
In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.
“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”
View Full Image Gil Kerlikowske, the new White House drug czar, signaled Wednesday his openness to rethinking the government’s approach to fighting drug use.
Mr. Kerlikowske’s comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate — and likely more controversial — stance on the nation’s drug problems. Prior administrations talked about pushing treatment and reducing demand while continuing to focus primarily on a tough criminal-justice approach.
The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment’s role growing relative to incarceration, Mr. Kerlikowske said.
Already, the administration has called for an end to the disparity in how crimes involving crack cocaine and powder cocaine are dealt with. Critics of the law say it unfairly targeted African-American communities, where crack is more prevalent.
The administration also said federal authorities would no longer raid medical-marijuana dispensaries in the 13 states where voters have made medical marijuana legal. Agents had previously done so under federal law, which doesn’t provide for any exceptions to its marijuana prohibition.
During the presidential campaign, President Barack Obama also talked about ending the federal ban on funding for needle-exchange programs, which are used to stem the spread of HIV among intravenous-drug users.
The drug czar doesn’t have the power to enforce any of these changes himself, but Mr. Kerlikowske plans to work with Congress and other agencies to alter current policies. He said he hasn’t yet focused on U.S. policy toward fighting drug-related crime in other countries.
Mr. Kerlikowske was most recently the police chief in Seattle, a city known for experimenting with drug programs. In 2003, voters there passed an initiative making the enforcement of simple marijuana violations a low priority. The city has long had a needle-exchange program and hosts Hempfest, which draws tens of thousands of hemp and marijuana advocates.
Seattle currently is considering setting up a project that would divert drug defendants to treatment programs.
Mr. Kerlikowske said he opposed the city’s 2003 initiative on police priorities. His officers, however, say drug enforcement — especially for pot crimes — took a back seat, according to Sgt. Richard O’Neill, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild. One result was an open-air drug market in the downtown business district, Mr. O’Neill said.
“The average rank-and-file officer is saying, ‘He can’t control two blocks of Seattle, how is he going to control the nation?’ ” Mr. O’Neill said.
Sen. Tom Coburn, the lone senator to vote against Mr. Kerlikowske, was concerned about the permissive attitude toward marijuana enforcement, a spokesman for the conservative Oklahoma Republican said. [drug war]
Others said they are pleased by the way Seattle police balanced the available options. “I think he believes there is a place for using the criminal sanctions to address the drug-abuse problem, but he’s more open to giving a hard look to solutions that look at the demand side of the equation,” said Alison Holcomb, drug-policy director with the Washington state American Civil Liberties Union.
Mr. Kerlikowske said the issue was one of limited police resources, adding that he doesn’t support efforts to legalize drugs. He also said he supports needle-exchange programs, calling them “part of a complete public-health model for dealing with addiction.”
Mr. Kerlikowske’s career began in St. Petersburg, Fla. He recalled one incident as a Florida undercover officer during the 1970s that spurred his thinking that arrests alone wouldn’t fix matters.
“While we were sitting there, the guy we’re buying from is smoking pot and his toddler comes over and he blows smoke in the toddler’s face,” Mr. Kerlikowske said. “You go home at night, and you think of your own kids and your own family and you realize” the depth of the problem.
Since then, he has run four police departments, as well as the Justice Department’s Office of Community Policing during the Clinton administration.
Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that supports legalization of medical marijuana, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about Mr. Kerlikowske. “The analogy we have is this is like turning around an ocean liner,” he said. “What’s important is the damn thing is beginning to turn.”
James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest law-enforcement labor organization, said that while he holds Mr. Kerlikowske in high regard, police officers are wary.
“While I don’t necessarily disagree with Gil’s focus on treatment and demand reduction, I don’t want to see it at the expense of law enforcement. People need to understand that when they violate the law there are consequences.”
CNN host Don Lemon examined the growing call in America to legalize cannabis tonight, prompted by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s suggestion this week that the state debate legalizing cannabis and convene a blue-ribbon commission to examine the prospects of such.
I was opposed by prohibitionist Kevin Sabet in a very brief cable news exchange. If supporters of cannabis law reformers want to continue to raise the public discussion level on legalizing cannabis, contact CNN and request that they provide even greater coverage of cannabis-related matters, debates and online surveys; along with MSNBC, CNBC, Fox and C-Span.
HOW TO HAVE YOUR TEETH DRILLED WITHOUT NOVOCAIN (OR GAS)
By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board of Directors, medical marijuana patient
Science and medicine run deep in my family. My dad and an uncle had Ph.D.s in parasitology and pathology. My dad’s dad was an M.D. Grandpa met my grandmother when they were both attending medical school at the Univ. of California, in 1915. My grandma’s grandmother learned surgical nursing during the Civil War and afterward was the “doctor” for Oroville, California for many years. My mother, brother, and several aunts are all Registered Nurses. For at least five generations, our family has been committed to science and healing. It is from this perspective that I view marijuana as a medicine.
Like most Americans, I discovered marijuana as a medicine quite by accident. 60-years old, I’ve used pot for over 41 years simply because it makes me feel good. I like it. But who would have ever guessed cannabis was actually helping me stay healthy at the same time?
A ‘bad back’ is one of medicine’s most oft heard adult complaints, and during my 35-years of farming and ranching, my body has written many a check my back couldn’t cash. Sometimes my back has hurt so bad that if I got down on the floor, I couldn’t get up without help. In the end, after trying numerous back treatments, I found that just plain walking and stretching was the best way to deal with my lower back pain, that is, walking and stretching while consuming marijuana. I had first bunched these activities together so as to allow me to get my hurting back “walked out”, and at the same time, I had the privacy to smoke a little pot out of the sight of my growing children. I soon found that walking and stretching while using cannabis was many times more effective for treating my back pain than just walking without it! Marijuana seemed to relax my muscles, reduce spasms and inflammation. When I later became acquainted with the scientific research on this subject, I found out that was exactly what cannabis, and its cannabinoids, had been doing for my body all along.
Decades of splitting firewood, pounding fence posts and other such farm work has left me with two ruptured discs in my neck and numbness and pain that sometimes plagues my hands and fingers. Nasty. Sometimes, very, very nasty. Cannabis helps control the pain from these pinched nerves and cannabis helps me sleep at night without killing my liver or kidneys, without causing gastric distress or constipation, and without damaging my sex drive or good humor. Cannabis helps me pursue my non-surgical options, while at the same time it reduces inflammation and muscle soreness from my on-going activities.
Along with the work-related injuries, I am also a walking encyclopedia of old football injuries, some that still have me hobbling around, four decades after the last touchdown. I’m a big guy, played defensive tackle and lacrosse, too. I loved banging heads. In the process, I’ve separated a shoulder, had a major knee operation and sprained both ankles numerous times. But, am I standing in line for a knee or hip replacement like my no-pot using baby sister or brother-in-law? NOPE! Why no replacements of my damaged joints? I honestly think it’s because of the four decades of cannabis use that I can still walk five miles every day on my banged-up knee and ankles without any pain or inflammation. As it turns out, even the cartilage in one’s joints has cannabinoid receptor sites.
Oh yes, sure a dislocated ankle really hurts, but for a real front-row seat to the world of pain, there is nothing like a migraine headache. I am one of the unfortunate millions of Americans who have diet-triggered migraine headaches. But fortunately, over the years, I’ve rooted out my dietary ‘triggers’, which include: chocolate, red wine, aged cheese, soy sauce,…and now, I rarely have a migraine anymore. I avoid those triggers like the plague. But in my medicine chest, just in case, to help me deal with one of those aura-producing, skull-splitting migraine headaches that still lurk along life’s path, marijuana is an essential medicine. Almost instant migraine relief is possible for me with vaporized or smoked cannabis.
In late January, this past winter, we had a freezing fog that glazed-over everything for miles around. I took a dramatic fall on the ice and landed flat on the back of my ass. Both feet went out from under me so quickly I had not even gotten an elbow or finger down to help break my fall onto the ice-covered concrete slab. Well, at least I hadn’t cracked my head, I thought, as I lay there on my back on the ice, testing for broken bones. Slowly I started to move. Yup, I was OK. No broken hip, thank God—just the start of one very, very sore ass from taking the full impact of that drop onto the ice-glazed concrete. I crawled back into the house, went directly to our freezer, and took out a double dose of my special medical marijuana spice cake. About an hour-and-a-half later, my wife and I walked out the door on the start of a slow, but enjoyable, three-mile hike. My pelvis was very sore but, with the cannabis properly applied, it was good to go. I repeated this treatment every day for the next week, cannabis edibles and walking.
As my bruised butt was healing, I went to see my dentist for a check-up. He looked into my mouth and said I needed a filling, “Nothing too major.” Fortunately I was prepared; I had taken a good dose of my cannabis edibles an hour or so before my appointment, to allow me to sit, despite my injury, without discomfort in the dentist’s chair. I said to my dentist, “No Novocain today, Doc.” He nodded and started to prepare his drill. He’d seen me do this before.
Cannabinoid receptor sites are primarily in the peripheral nervous system. As cannabis calms the underlying causes of most back pain, the inflammation and tightness of the muscles, the cannabinoids also act on the peripheral nervous system to modulate the pain messages transmitted to the major nerves. The pain from tooth drilling is a bit different, that kind of pain is hard-wired directly into the brain. Cannabis doesn’t block that pain so much as helps a person to simply look past the pain and ignore it.
In having one’s teeth drilled, due to the fear of pain, virtually everyone trades a very few moments of serious pain from the drilling, for about two hours of having one’s face defrost from the jaw-numbing shot of Novocain. I said, “No Novocain for me today, Doc,” because I chose the pain, knowing medical marijuana would help me overcome it.
Here’s how: Take cannabis edibles an hour or two before you are to sit in the dentist’s chair. Not flinching while the dentist is drilling your teeth is a big job. You must lie there absolutely still, melted into the chair, immobile. Cannabis is very useful in this process, not so much to block the high-voltage pain from the tooth drilling, but to help your mind reach the meditative state to deflect that pain, so you can let the pain flow over you like water.
Think of your time in that dentist’s chair like body surfing in big waves. When a crusher wave comes in, you must dive down deep, hold your breath, and let it roll over you. When it’s safe, you can come up again for air. The ocean is too big to fight; you have to hold on until the wave passes. And, it’s the very same thing having your teeth drilled without gas or Novocain. The very second the drilling stops, that tooth pain stops, as well, and you can safely come up for air. With modern high-speed dental drills, the actual total number of seconds of real pain are quite few, providing the excavation isn’t the Grand Canyon (your dentist can help you judge). So, just relax, it’s really not that bad, roll your eyes back, and let her rip! With a little pot spice cake behind you, you’ll be quite surprised, you can handle it! And, it’s only going to hurt for a few seconds, anyway. Afterward, when the drilling’s all done, putting in the filling doesn’t hurt a bit.
One very nice thing about dentistry without Novocain is you always get the occlusion right, the first time, everytime, because you can actually feel your mouth when the dentist tells you to bite down, and asks, “Is the new filling too high or low?” And then, when the dentist takes off your dental bib, it’s all over; it is really totally over—no frosted face, no needle marks in your gums, nothing else to recover from.
Without the Novocain shot as part of your dental work, you can walk out of your dentist’s office pain-free after a filling, your cannabis edibles still kicked in, whistling your favorite tune! Now, you try doing that for the next hour or two with your face and lower lip de-frosting from the Novocain!
I’ve been using cannabis as a medicine for over 30 years, 5 years legally. Washington State’s voters gave me the right to use marijuana as a medicine in 1998; I got my doctor’s recommendation in ‘04. President Obama’s Justice Department has said the Feds will no longer interfere with Washington State law in this area. Decades of worry and paranoia, the fear of a SWAT Team, with their guns drawn, bursting through our front door in the middle of the night, bringing drug dogs to search for my medicine has abated, at least for now. Help NORML end America’s marijuana prohibition for good.
Achieving proper titration: In the words of the DEA’s own Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young: “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances know to man…” Advances in technology have come in all areas of modern life and making marijuana use even safer is no exception! In the last five years, I have all but given up smoking pot in favor of using a vaporizer—it’s clean and very tasty, with no tars or fire-created carcinogens—although for mobility and socialization it will always be hard to replace a joint. Achieving proper dosing levels using a vaporizer or smoking is quite easy, full effects are seen in about ten minutes and last about an hour-and-a-half before declining. Homemade cannabis edibles take about 20-40 minutes to kick-in, a lot depending on what else is in your stomach, and some experimentation is needed to find the proper dosing levels; but for long term, high-dose pain relief, edibles are hard to beat.
About two years ago, when the pinched nerves in my neck were acting their very worst, I began using cannabis at dosing levels where pot’s marvelous, fun and useful psycho-active effects started disappearing for me as well. Damn, it’s the shits to be that sick! Thank goodness, I’m better now.
Boulder, Colorado: I have every reason to believe that ‘4/20′ in 2009 will be the biggest and most momentous one to date as NORML launches 7,770 nationwide TV ads that advocate for cannabis law reform; NORML expects record numbers of supporters to join the organization for the celebratory one-day price of $4.20 because, I believe, there is a palpable zeitgeist in America right now favoring reform; the Obama administration appears amenable to some cannabis law reforms in ways that no prior president since Jimmy Carter has embraced; and lastly, with NORML’s nearly 600,000 ‘friends’ on Facebook and nearly 67,000 MySpace, more Americans than ever before who are keen on cannabis can create a viral effect that benefits reform.
Here in Boulder between 10,000-15,000 students and activists are expected to celebrate in what has become the biggest 4/20 event in the world.
Heck, the New York Times has already posted a profile of 4/20 for today’s paper, where they came yesterday for interview and photos to the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Marijuana Forum. This portends well to what will be an insane day in the media for pro-reform groups like NORML (I’ve already got 35 interviews scheduled…) as I was also asked to pen an essay for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered that I assume will be published today. (UPDATE! Read and comment on Allen’s essay here.)
I dare say we as a country are finally ‘getting it’ regarding the clear and obvious need to reform our misguided cannabis laws.
Thanks to the hundreds of NORML supporters who donated what they could to buy ad time to launch a timely 4/20 ad campaign, you’re the green that keeps NORML all grassroots, all of the time!
Have an enjoyable and safe 4/20 from the staff of NORML!
Legalization: Yes We Can - Jason Druss
[UPDATE: Yes, the part at the end where the young lady giggles has been edited out for the airing on TV. I will work to find a copy to place on our site. -- Russ Belville, National Outreach Coordinator]
Marijuana Advocacy Group Launches TV Campaign on ‘4/20’
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Foundation (NORML Foundation) a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization, established in 1997, is purchasing advertising time on selective cable outlets to underscore the urgency of decriminalizing cannabis.
The NORML Foundation launched this pro-marijuana ad campaign to create further political pressure on the federal government to recognize 1) the ever-increasing support of Americans who favor cannabis legalization, 2) the clear sea change of cannabis laws that’s been happening at the state level since Californians voted in favor of medicinal access to cannabis in 1996, and 3) to rally cannabis consumers and anti-prohibitionists on April 20, a date on the calendar that has organically become a national day to both publicly celebrate cannabis as well as protest 70 years of prohibition.
The featured ad is the winner of NORML’s recent user-generated-content contest that asks NORML supporters: ‘What would you say to President Obama about legalizing marijuana?’
New Jersey college student and up and coming filmmaker Jason Druss created the winning submission and is the recipient of the contest’s $3,500 cash grand prize after 6500 votes were cast on NORML’s webpage. “It’s time for President Obama to endorse cannabis law reform where it is legally controlled and taxed like alcohol and tobacco products,” stated Jason Druss. “It’s shocking that students can lose out from federal student loans for possessing a few joints, when pot’s been part of the college culture for decades.’
Marijuana, By the Numbers…
Thirteen states (with a population base of 115 million Americans) have decriminalized cannabis possession; thirteen states (with a population base of 75 million Americans) now have medical cannabis laws. Additionally, more states than ever before are debating cannabis law reform, including California and Massachusetts where legalization legislation have been introduced.
Since 1965, over 20 million Americans have been arrested on cannabis-related charges—90% for possession-only; over 900,000 cannabis arrests are expected again this year.
According to numerous survey and polls, approximately 75% of Americans support medical access to cannabis; 73% favor decriminalizing cannabis possession for adults and 42% of Americans support legalizing cannabis.
7,700 NORML Foundation ads are appearing on cable outlets nationwide (with a strong media buy in Ohio) on CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, Fuse, FX Networks, G4, MSNBC, CNN’s Headline News and Spike TV.
While 4/20 has become an national phenomenon of sorts, and is the launch date these days for numerous commercial products and services directed at America’s cannabis consumers, this remarkable day in my view has lacked a certain degree of needed gravitas– with ‘4/20′ looking more like a ‘party in the park’ than genuinely organic socio-political events that elected policymakers and the media should take seriously.
However, I’d like to highlight the Colorado University chapter of NORML for not only holding the largest organized annual ‘4/20′ event in the world–but for recognizing this year, a year marked so far by an ever-growing voter sentiment about the need to legalize cannabis–that ‘4/20′ provides cannabis law reform advocates a prime annual opportunity to do far more than just protest in the park by convening a day-long, substantive conference in advance of ‘celebrating cannabis’ the next day by exploring logical and effective alternatives to cannabis prohibition.
NORML encourages college chapters of NORML and SSDP to follow CU NORML’s lead by organizing ‘marijuana forums’ on their campuses next week, as college students are disproportionately arrested at higher rates than most other subgroups of Americans for cannabis possession charges and can be denied access to federal loans for college if convicted of a single cannabis possession offense.
Despite President Obama’s unfortunate inability to take Americans’ current calls for cannabis law reforms seriously, there is nothing funny about cannabis prohibition in America. Next weekend at The University of Colorado at Boulder, students, activists, professors, lawyers and doctors, as well as proponents of cannabis prohibition will engage in serious-minded discussion and symposiums about how to move forward into the near future by crafting functional cannabis policies at the state and federal level.
National Marijuana Forum
April 18-20, 2009
University of Colorado, Boulder
Colorado NORML is pleased to announce the second annual Hunter S. Thompson Scholarship to attend the NORML Aspen Legal Seminar!
The NORML Legal Committee’s Annual Aspen Conference (which is a continuing legal education seminar for practicing lawyers) is scheduled for June 4th and 5th, 2009, at The Gant. Colorado NORML, is presenting the scholarship, which covers three nights lodging and the conference registration fee, to an attorney or cannabis law reform activist who, by written submission, demonstrates 1) a desire to improve public advocacy and/or trial skills related to representing cannabis consumers in the courts (criminal, medical, and more), 2) a demonstrated need for financial assistance to attend this year’s Aspen Legal Seminar.
The value of the scholarship is approximately $1000.00.
Some of the finest defense attorneys (and cannabis law reform activists) in the United States have been coming to NORML’s Aspen seminar for many years to learn, enjoy the inspired environs of beautiful Aspen in early summer–and to do so at VERY reasonable rates. This year’s seminar focuses on state and federal medical marijuana laws, and is a MUST educational opportunity for medical marijuana patients, providers, cultivators, as well as for criminal defense attorneys (and public defenders, who receive a discount to attend).
Check out this year’s informative and interesting schedule here. The social events, including a great, private dinner catered by Cache Cache’s Chris Lanter, are included with the scholarship.
Criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, cannabis law reform activists, medical marijuana patients and their providers from the 13 states with medical cannabis laws are strongly encouraged to attend (HI, AK, WA, OR, CA, NV, NM, CO, MT, MI, RI, VT and ME).
Submission for this year’s Hunter Thompson Scholarship is by fax, mail or email. The scholarship is awarded by the CONORML board of directors, please direct your submissions ‘Attn: Steve Wells’ at: swells@conorml.org, (303) 725-0774 (f) by April 15, midnight Rocky Mountain High time–and we hope to announce the recipient of the scholarship on April 20th, 2009.
Colorado NORML
PO Box 492
Longmont, CO 80502
The submission word count rule will be strictly enforced. Submissions may be of any length…
Anyone blind to the irony? Gil Kerlikowske, my successor, is on his way to the other Washington to assume the mantle of “drug czar.” I am, on the other hand, a proud and vocal member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Gil will have a national, indeed international platform from which to make his case for a continuation of the nation’s drug laws. I’ll use this space, at least for this initial post, to make the argument that our drug policies don’t work, and that the “War on Drugs” has caused far more harm than good.
Since Richard Nixon pronounced drugs “Public Enemy Number One” and declared all-out war on them in 1971, we have spent over $1 trillion prosecuting that war. We’ve incarcerated tens of millions of our fellow citizens for nonviolent drug offenses, arresting wildly disproportionate numbers of young people, poor people, people of color–most for simple possession of marijuana. Wrenched from their families, these folks have lost jobs, forfeited school loans, been booted out of public housing. And to what end?
Drugs are more readily available today, at lower prices and higher levels of potency than in the history of the drug war. Prices fluctuate, use levels ebb and flow but one thing remains constant: the unrepealable law of supply and demand. If people want mood or mind-altering drugs, suppliers will make sure they get them. And, as long as those drugs remain illegal, the illicit, untaxed profits associated with them will continue to grow. As will the violence associated with their commerce.
Prohibition, as we learned during the 1920s, breeds lawlessness. In fact, it guarantees it. Yesterday’s bootleggers and today’s drug traffickers must arm themselves in order to protect or expand their markets. For years we’ve struggled with open-air drug markets, drive-by/drug-related killings, the police in one city or another occasionally shooting up the wrong house in a drug raid.
Americans wised up to the folly of alcohol prohibition, repealing the Volstead Act in 1933 and putting a virtual end to that era’s drive-bys (picture Al Calpone’s minions firing Thompsons from the back seat of a ‘29 Model A), drug overdose deaths (think bad bathtub gin), property values shot to hell, entire neighborhoods rundown if not abandoned altogether.
Replacing alcohol prohibition with a regulatory model worked. Not perfectly, of course, but well enough that it drove the bootleggers out of business. And it produced a formidable barrier between kids and products they ought not to be taking. (When’s the last time you heard of a street drug dealer carding a 14-year-old?) Regulation and control of alcohol made our communities healthier, our children safer.
Seattle and the state of Washington are poised to take a strong leadership position in the campaign for sane and sensible drug laws. We’ve passed a medical marijuana law, and Seattleites have made simple, adult marijuana possession cases the lowest law enforcement priority in the city. University of Washington researchers Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert just last week issued a report that concluded that “penalizing doesn’t reduce use of marijuana and lessening or removing penalties doesn’t increase it.”
Think of the money we’d save if we focused our law enforcement resources on people who drive under the influence of any drug, including alcohol. Or who furnish drugs to kids. Or who, under the influence of booze or other drugs, jealousy, insecurity or greed, steal a car, batter a spouse, abuse a child, rob a bank…
And think of the lives we’d save if we invested not in a futile drug war but in prevention, education and treatment.
I doubt our new drug czar will favor an end to prohibition. For one thing, it would put him out of a job. But perhaps, unlike former drug czar John Walters, he’ll be willing to listen to the argument. Or debate its merits.
This article was originally published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
I received a late Friday afternoon call from one of Larry King’s producers in Los Angeles seeking some cannabis-related factoids and related information for an apparent debate tonight on CNN’s Larry King between libertarian Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul, M.D. and, well, actor Steven Baldwin.
The submission word count rule will be strictly enforced. Submissions may be of any length…
