Tuesday, June 10, 2003
2:07 PM
Subject: WFB column
On the
Right
Reefer
Madness
The experience of Ed Rosenthal of Oakland,
California accelerates the day
when heavy dilemmas in our legal system might
just force a fresh look at our
marijuana laws. Presumably that will have to
happen when state legislators,
congressmen, and presidents are in recess,
because the great enemy of
sensible reform has been, of course, politicians
high from righteousness.
What happened to Rosenthal was that he was
convicted of marijuana
cultivation and conspiracy, facing a conceivable
sentence of l00 years in
prison and a fine of $4.5 million. The defense
attorney had been forbidden
by presiding Federal District Judge Charles
Breyer to advise the jury of the
perspectives of the defense. The city
of Oakland, instructed by a statewide
proposition in l996, had enacted an
ordinance authorizing the growth of
marijuana for medical use. The
judge took the flat position that local laws
do not override federal laws;
therefore the verdict could not be influenced
by the legal contradiction, and
therefore the jurors shouldn't be
sidetracked by hearing about it.
The
reasoning was identical to that of Judge George King in the case of
computer
guru and poet Peter McWilliams. Judge King did not permit
McWilliams to
base his defense on the California initiative. McWilliams died
from AIDS,
while awaiting sentencing, unrelieved by the marijuana that
critically
lessened his nausea.
Sentencing day for Rosenthal was at hand on June 5,
and there was some
commotion when the thought was expressed that the guilty
finding could mean
life in prison. One juror had told the press that if she
had known such
might be the consequence of a guilty finding, she, and
presumably other
jurors, would not have voted as they did. The day
came, and Judge Breyer,
perhaps with a wink of the eye, sentenced Rosenthal
to one day in jail and a
$1,000 fine.
Now Ed Rosenthal is not to be
confused with a stray felon who took a toke at
an outdoor movie with his
date. Oh no. Rosenthal is a full-time
practitioner of resistance to
marijuana legislation. He has written several
books, totaling in sales over 1
million. In one of his most recent, The
Closet Cultivator, he outlined how to
build an indoor-marijuana-growing
system impossible to detect through any
method other than betrayal. When
arrested, he was linked to a nearby
warehouse full of the drug, ostensibly
consigned for medical
use.
Rosenthal had been teasing the law along about as provocatively as
one can
do. He had a monthly radio show, and a little while before his arrest
his
guest was San Francisco's district attorney, Terence Hallinan, who
praised
efforts by medical-marijuana cooperatives and permitted himself the
obiter
dictum on existing laws that "the government anti-drug policy is a big
lie
that's supported by a thousand other lies."
Eric Schlosser of The
Atlantic Monthly has published a deeply informative
and readable book called
Reefer Madness. He wonderfully illustrates the
complexity, contradiction, and
futility of extant drug laws. Although
Governor Clinton of Arkansas
introduced legislation to lessen state
penalties for marijuana, he went on,
as president, to treat marijuana as if
it were as innocent as adultery.
He doubled the arrests for marijuana
infractions. When Nixon declared
his tough-drug policies, athwart the
recommendation of his own commission
which had advocated licensing marijuana
for individual home consumption,
arrests climbed to over 100,000 per year.
In 2001, 720,000 Americans were
arrested for pot. About 20,000 inmates in
the federal system have been
incarcerated primarily for a marijuana offense.
Those in state systems would
equal that figure, and exceed it. The problem
is more than the laws'
contradictions.
The Uniform Sentencing Act has given prosecutors, not
judges, almost plenary
powers over defendants, power ruthlessly used to
extract information and to
encourage duplicity and to make property rights
insecure. Judicial process
is convoluted to the point where a judge can
reasonably exercise a choice
between 100 years in prison and one day in
prison. The marijuana laws can
most directly be compared to the
Prohibition-era laws, which didn't work,
undermined the law, and were
capriciously enforced.
Pot consumption varies, but not in correlation
with the laws' throwweight.
If you buy an ounce in New York State, that could
bring you a fine of $l00;
in Louisiana, a jail sentence of twenty
years.
Ed Rosenthal is quoted by author Schlosser. Will the laws in
America
dissipate, as they have done in Europe? He doesn't think so.
"They've made
the laws so brittle, one day they're going to break." The whole
edifice of
prohibition would come down, he predicted, "like the fall of the
Berlin
Wall." Schlosser nicely summarized Rosenthal's prediction. "A group
of
powerful, white, middle-aged men will meet in a room to discuss what to
do
about marijuana. And they will reach the only logical conclusion: tax
it."
Like booze, some will then go on to abuse it, though with
consequences less
dire