from the Globe and Mail (Canada)
SAN FRANCISCO WEEDS OUT
PRISON TIME FOR POT ARRESTS
First-Time Offenders
Now Face Penalties Ranging From Fines To Community Service
SAN
FRANCISCO -- Nearly every day, Thom Bateman helps dole out
San
Francisco-style justice to people caught with small amounts of
marijuana.
Each case takes less time than it would to smoke a
joint.
If the culprit is a regular citizen who has been found, say,
lighting up in
the bleachers at a ball game, the case takes about a
minute.
"If that's the end of the story, it's 'Okay, sir, that's $135 or
two days
of community service. Have a nice day,' " Mr. Bateman said,
describing the
tone and speed of a typical first-time possession charge in
San Francisco.
People caught with less than 28.5 grams of marijuana in
this California
city renowned for its liberal views and activist citizenry
are summoned, at
a time that suits them, to community courts convened in
church basements
and community centres.
A panel of neighbourhood
residents acts as judge and jury.
Under California law, a
marijuana-possession charge is a misdemeanour, but
in San Francisco, it won't
land you in the criminal-justice system. If you
pay the fine, the conviction
is erased after a year.
It was the brainchild of San Francisco district
attorney Terence Hallinan
-- a former defence lawyer who has a testy
reputation with his own police
department -- who decreed that petty pot
charges shouldn't be clogging the
courts.
With that, Mr. Hallinan --
who is on record as wanting to legalize all
marijuana use -- made San
Francisco the most liberal county in the United
States for people caught with
small amounts of the drug.
The system is based on the same rationale the
Liberal government used when
it introduced a bill last week to decriminalize
pot possession in Canada:
Recreational users caught with small amounts
shouldn't be branded with a
lifelong criminal record if they're not
trafficking or growing marijuana.
Canada's proposed threshold for
avoiding a criminal conviction is lower
than California's, at less than 15
grams.
San Francisco's fine-paying system could be Canada's
future.
Mr. Bateman, a cigar-smoking former arbitrator who runs the
community-court
system, applauded Canada's move, saying marijuana users don't
belong in jail.
From what he's seen, "they're like you or me.
They're kids. There isn't a
stereotype. In California, there's an awful lot
of people who smoke."
If the ticketed person is a drug addict, the panel
will hand out pamphlets
on where to seek help. Students might be warned not
to buy from someone
they don't know.
But Mr. Bateman said the
community courts aren't trying to steer marijuana
users from the
drug.
"Do I think a college kid from San Francisco State University that
smoked a
joint and got caught is never going to smoke a joint again?" he
asked in an
interview at the program's downtown storefront office. "Ha! That
means I
should be smoking the stuff."
The district attorney's office
doesn't keep statistics on how many
pot-possession charges are processed each
year, since they are not felony
crimes. But a spokesman guessed it was fewer
than 200.
"We're not going to spend a lot of time on this," Mr. Bateman
continued.
"And there's nothing real wrong with that. We want to keep
people out of
the system."
Despite San Francisco's liberal attitude,
users are not ubiquitous as are
those in Vancouver, the other West Coast city
with a history of tolerating
marijuana use. There, users smoke openly on the
street and in parks,
particularly in the downtown West End.
At the
corner of San Francisco's Haight and Ashbury streets, the epicentre
of the
U.S. counterculture movement in the 1960s, there is a Gap store now
-- but no
pot smokers.
During the Summer of Love in 1967, the famous intersection
down the street
from Golden Gate Park drew thousands of young people who set
up camp and
used drugs openly.
Today, it has a tourist feel, dotted
with high-end boutiques, Internet
cafes and bookshops. In the park itself,
one sunny afternoon this week, the
only smell of grass was the mowed
kind.
The pipe stores are still around, papered with literature railing
against
the U.S. war on drugs, but shop owners don't want to talk about
marijuana.
A sign in one store warned customers not to mention the word "pot"
or they
won't be served.
They say they don't want to rile federal
drug-enforcement officials, who
have made no bones about criticizing
California's attitude toward marijuana
use.
"I guess you could [smoke
on the street], but you'd be dumb," said a
pipe-store owner when asked
whether people openly use marijuana in San
Francisco.
The leeriness,
activists say, is the result of President George W. Bush's
aggressive
antidrug policy, which has linked drug use to terrorism and
taken issue with
states, such as California, that allow the medicinal use
of marijuana. Even
though California has allowed pot clubs since 1996, the
federal government
has ignored the state statute and raided and arrested
growers who sell to
clubs that dispense pot to people with chronic illnesses.
"I sense that
the federal government continues to feel that marijuana
should be a big part
of the war on drugs and are anxious to arrest people
who use it," said
Michael Menecini, the manager of the San Francisco
district attorney's
misdemeanour-trial team. "They're upset with
California. They're upset with
Canada."
Last week in Washington, John Walters, the White House director
of
drug-control policy, warned that Ottawa's new legislation could lead
to
increased exports of marijuana from Canada to the United
States.
But the San Francisco district attorney's office has no intention
of
changing its position. "There's a culture here that believes that the
usage
of marijuana is not the worst possible offence you can commit,"
Mr.
Menecini said.
"The hippie kid with a half an ounce of marijuana
in his pocket, if he's
not breaking the law, the chances of prosecuting him
are minus 150 per
cent, if you could even catch him."
In the United
States, far more than in Canada, the result of the federal
crackdown, the
grow-op busts and the warning from the Drug Enforcement
Administration has
been to make cannabis use a political act, with lines
firmly drawn and the
enemy identified.
In San Francisco, marijuana activists sound much like
religious zealots,
using reverential language to describe their lifestyle and
their leaders.
Last year, Mr. Hallinan told an annual conference of the
National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws that marijuana is not
only
good medicine but "unquestionably part of the religious
experience."
Comments such as those have given him the status of prophet
among cannabis
activists.
"Terence Hallinan, he's a hell of a man, a
hero," said Jesse Burke, sitting
on a couch at the Compassion and Care
Center, one of 13 cafes that dispense
marijuana to patients with cancer, AIDS
and other chronic illnesses.
Only patients with cards issued by the
city's health department are allowed
past the centre's front desk in the
city's gritty Mission district. Mr.
Burke, 48, is an epileptic who smokes pot
to control his seizures. He was
joined by Wayne Justmann, a fast-talking
former teacher and bodyguard, now
a full-time marijuana activist.
Mr.
Justmann, 58, who has been HIV-positive for 15 years, smokes marijuana
to
alleviate numbness in his limbs. But he started smoking it 30 years ago,
long
before he became sick.
Like many activists, he elevates marijuana use to
a spiritual experience
and likens its users to downtrodden
scapegoats.
"Look at these people," he said, gesturing at the subdued
crowd in the
shabby, smoke-filled room. "These are real folks. We vote. We
pay rent. We
just want a little relief."
Mr. Justmann, an Iowa native,
said he moved to San Francisco because of its
tolerance toward marijuana use.
"Thank God for what we have here."