Marijuana- America’s new favorite drug?
Marijuana is back. Safer than alcohol it is a mild psychoactive drug used all over the world for thousands of years. Nobody has ever died from smoking it. It has been used as medicine in cultures around the world. Even that symbol of propriety England’s Queen Victoria used it to ease her menstrual cramps.
These days hundreds of studies from around the world tell of its effectiveness in helping those suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, AIDS, Glaucoma, Crone’s Disease, and a long list of ailments. 14 states have approved its use for medical purposes and the bill in the New York State legislature would make it 15.
In July the Veteran’s Administration approved its use if recommended by a VA doctor. Of special interest to them is its use in treating the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) so common among Vets. Remember… the VA is a branch of the same federal government that officially claims marijuana has no medical use.
The U.S. Patent Office opened a department specifically to trademark names of different types of marijuana. Names like Acapulco Gold, Skunk, Agent Orange, and Third Dimension, could be registered to an individual or corporation for use only by them just like “Coke” or “Marlboro”. The office was open for several months before someone realized that marijuana was, under federal law, very illegal and the federal government couldn’t be selling trademark rights to illegal products. It was closed a couple of months ago.
Now marijuana is moving beyond just medicine. California has a bill that will be voted on by the public in November calling for marijuana to be taxed and regulated… just like alcohol… legalized. The polls show it will be a very close vote… about 50% for the idea and 50% against. If it doesn’t pass this year it will probably pass next year. However, 65% believe it is at least somewhat likely marijuana will be legalized in the United States in the next 10 years. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that just 17% of Adults rate use of marijuana as riskier than drinking alcohol. Fifty percent (50%), about three times as many say alcohol is more dangerous.
Altering one’s consciousness is a natural human trait. Children love to spin around and get dizzy. For adults in today’s society alcohol is, for better or worse, our consciousness - altering drug of choice. The different tribes of American Indians used tobacco, peyote, coca, or psychedelic mushrooms. To the best of my knowledge the only culture not to use some form of plant to alter their consciousness are the Eskimos of the far north simply because nothing grows there.
Marijuana is certainly safer than alcohol - nobody has ever died from smoking it and you can’t say that about alcohol. It seems that America is moving away from alcohol as its favorite recreational drug . As the country makes that move it will leave behind not only the problems associated with alcohol use but the terrible costs, both in money and ruined lives, of marijuana prohibition. It’s high time.
New York: Shouldn’t we be Progressing not Regressing?
I just spent a wonderful weekend in one of the most beautiful places on the world… The Thousand Islands. It’s a part of the St. Lawrence river near Lake Ontario. The river separates the US and Canada and the stretch just above the lake is chock full of small islands, about 1800 of them actually. It was a haven for alcohol smugglers back in the 20’s because of the ease, if you knew the islands and shoals, of evading the law. Today there are all sorts of craft from Jet-ski’s to massive freighters that ply the Great Lakes crossing back and forth across the border all summer long. People have summer camps on many of the islands and all along both the US and Canadian shorelines. Americans own property on the Canadian side, Canadians own property on the US side. It’s very porous border.
In one direction the river opens up into the easternmost of the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario, then over Niagra Falls into Lake Erie and points west. In the other direction it flows through sparsely populated areas of Canada and eventually into the North Atlantic.
Well along comes New York’s Democratic Senator “Chuck” Schumer, with New York’s best interests at heart of course, with a plan. A plan to “to make sure we devote resources to stop drug trafficking at the northern border, just as we have at the southern border.”
Well doesn’t that sound a bit passé ? I mean I thought the country was moving in the opposite direction regarding the war on drugs? The cocaine sentencing disparity was shrunk. New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws were gutted. Fourteen states now have legalized medical marijuana and there is a referendum in California to legalize marijuana altogether. Almost everybody you talk to these days will tell you the drug war was a monumental failure that cost billions and kept these drugs away from no one who wanted them but it seems the good Senator is nostalgic for the old drug war.
Let’s see… there is already a customs checkpoint if you drive across one of the bridges that span the river so drug smuggling by car is somewhat risky. Boats are another story. Small pleasure craft come and go all summer long , back and forth from Canadian to US waters and back again. You are supposed to check in if you land anywhere but that clearly unenforceable… or is it? Perhaps we could build a wall down the center of the river? Or we could significantly increase the number of patrol boats and have make frequent stops of recreational boaters and demand papers and search their boats. Such a plan would certainly hurt the area’s property values as well as hurt countless businesses in the US and Canada but would it reduce the flow of drugs into the US? Since the best efforts of the Senator and his state’s Department of Corrections have failed to come up with a single drug-free maximum security prison, I doubt it.
Shame Senator… New York should be leading the move toward a rational drug policy not wasting money we don’t have repeating the mistakes of the past 40-odd years and expecting that somehow this time it’ll be different. Our school budgets get cut. Our taxes go up. Our roads are full of potholes yet we should spend millions trying to stem the flow of drugs across New York’s immense northern border? C’mon Senator… it’s 2010. New York is in the midst of a serious economic crunch. Can’t we stop throwing millions down the toilet and do something that might improve the lives of New Yorkers?
Marijuana Laws are on the Table
This is a big year for changing our marijuana laws. States from Maine to Arizona are considering legislation that would range from making marijuana available for those with certain medical conditions (14 states have done so already) to outright legalization of the drug. To those of us who have grown up with marijuana being illegal and demonized this may sound hard to believe but a 2009 poll found 56 percent of California voters support outright legalization. Estimates from California’s Board of Equalization say the state could raise $1.4 billion from marijuana legalization.
Mary Lou Dickerson, a Washington state representative has introduced a bill this year to sell marijuana in state liquor stores and tax it. Why? After seeing the cuts to Washington’s state drug and alcohol treatment programs the 63 year old grandmother would like to see the tax revenues generated spent on treatment programs.
Marijuana policy reform is still seen by many politicians as risky. Some of them, from “safe” districts where a majority of the voters favor reform will sponsor bills but most are apparently waiting for some sort of clearly unambiguous mandate from the electorate calling for it. Currently polling shows about 65-75% of the public in favor of medical marijuana and between 45 and 55% in favor of outright legalization. Not bad but not enough to make the sponsoring of such a bill a no-brainer if you want to be re-elected. There are ways around this however. In Nevada, marijuana advocates are busy collecting signatures to place a legalization measure on the state’s 2012 ballot. Rather than leaving the question of legalization up to local governments, as California’s initiative does, Nevada’s proposal would legalize and tax marijuana statewide. Nevada voters have already approved medical marijuana. The majority of the states with medical marijuana laws got them through such a referendum process rather then waiting for the legislature to muster the courage to introduce them.
California’s Governor Schwarzenegger in his younger days…
Many states that have passed medical marijuana bills are having difficulties with the new laws. In an effort to look tough on crime and not alienate conservative constituents the laws are very strict. For instance, only a handful of mostly terminal illnesses can be grounds for obtaining a medical marijuana card in New Jersey. Many states prohibit growing your own supplies and limit the amount of patients a “caregiver” can service. Since there are no legitimate sources for the drug which remains illegal under federal law patients have difficulties in getting their marijuana. In the other direction lax regulations on doctors reccomending marijuana and poor zoning regulations create another set of problems in states like California and Colorado.
Of course these problems would be remedied were the federal government to drop marijuana from its current status as Schedule One under the Controlled Substances Act and leave it up to the individual states to regulate it as they saw fit. That’s what happened when alcohol prohibition was repealed. Some states opted to remain dry… others didn’t… some made optional county by county. The shooting stopped and millions of otherwise law-abiding American citizens were no longer considered criminals.
A Rehabilitated Prohibitionist
The former director of President George W. Bush’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and the co-author with former Drug Czars Bill Bennett and John Walters of the book “Body Count: Moral Poverty…And How to Win America’s War Against Crime and Drugs” has just come out in favor of medical marijuana and serious consideration of marijuana decriminalization.
A political scientist and criminologist John J. Dilulio Jr. holds a Harvard Ph.D. He is a former professor of politics and public policy at Princeton and former director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Public Management. He is now a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and the Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. Dilulio has been a proponent of coerced substance-abuse treatment as a way of reducing crime for years and his serious consideration of legalizing marijuana is a surprising turn-around.
The author of an article called ”Let ‘Em Rot,” DiIulio was often cited by conservatives advocating more prisons and longer sentences. “No one - at least, no one in elite policy-wonk circles - is a bigger fan of incarcerating known, adjudicated adult and juvenile criminals than me,” he wrote in a 1996 article for Slate. 1993 book review for The New Republic, he implied that they were getting off too lightly. “It is not unreasonable to argue,” he wrote, “that the problem with the ‘get-tough’ approach of the last twenty-five years is that it hasn’t actually been followed. Despite mandatory sentencing laws, most drug offenders and other felons continue to spend only a fraction of their sentences behind bars.”
Over the years DiIulio has shown that he understands the difference between predatory criminals and non-violent drug offenders. Imprisoning the former reduces crime and protects the public safety. Imprisoning the latter however, just costs a lot of money.
In a recent article in Democracy his prescription for reducing crime addresses marijuana thusly…
“… legalize marijuana for medically prescribed uses, and seriously
consider decriminalizing it altogether. Last year there were more than
800,000 marijuana-related arrests. The impact of these arrests on crime
rates was likely close to zero. There is almost no scientific evidence
showing that pot is more harmful to its users’ health, more of a
“gateway drug,” or more crime-causing in its effects than alcohol or
other legal narcotic or mind-altering substances. Our post-2000 legal
drug culture has untold millions of Americans, from the very young to
the very old, consuming drugs in unprecedented and untested combinations
and quantities. Prime-time commercial television is now a virtual
medicine cabinet (”just ask your doctor if this drug is right for you”).
Big pharmaceutical companies function as all-purpose drug pushers. And
yet we expend scarce federal, state, and local law enforcement resources
waging “war” against pot users. That is insane.”
Well put professor.
Is it Change yet?
This does seem like the time to pick on Obama. The media is full of stories about unfulfilled promises and bungled initiatives. Our foreign policy today is hardly different from Bush’s - we’re still in Iraq and now we’re also in Afghanistan and there’s trouble on the horizon in Yemen. Guantanamo is still open. Our Anti-terrorism policy, according to the New York Times Magazine story a couple of weeks back, is still run largely by Bush appointees and the policy hasn’t changed. The Patriot Act is still here. The health care effort was bungled and now its passage is doubtful. He’s angered the Right and he’s angered the Left just as much. So what about us drug policy reformers?
Typically after a Presidential election US Attorneys appointed under the outgoing administration submit letters of resignation and the new administration replaces many of them with new ones. Well, in the spirit of change Mr. Obama did not accept the resignations of the US Attorneys and appoint his own people. The result? We still have Bush appointees overseeing prosecutions in all of the federal districts. No change in the Justice Department.
With 14 states now having passed medical marijuana laws there has been a demand for some scientific research , done here in the US, into the medical uses of marijuana. Currently the drug is Schedule One - (no medical use, high potential for abuse) and cannot be possessed even for research except for a highly controlled crop of poor quality pot grown in a government-run facility in Mississippi. The only agency with access to that marijuana is The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and Shirley Simson, a NIDA spokeswoman told the New York Times recently: “As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use. We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”
The DEA’s own administrative law judge ruled that NIDA’s monopolization of marijuana research is not in the public interest and ordered the government cannabis be made available to legitimate medical researchers, not just NIDA.
Former DEA Deputy Administrator Michele Leonhart chose to ignore the DEA’s own administrative law judge’s ruling.
So who did Obama pick last week to be the new head of the DEA? Bush-era appointee Michele Leonhart. No change at the DEA.
Before his election, when he was seen by many as the bringer of serious drug policy reform Obama told the Washington Post “Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources - it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us,, even when it’s inconvenient - especially when it’s inconvenient.”
Back in May of last year, after some awful comments by the Presidents new Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowski and his laughing at and dismissing the number one most popular question to come to his own website (Remember that?) I wrote on this blog that “For drug policy reform advocates it looks like the honeymoon with Obama is quickly coming to a close.” Now I think we can safely say the honeymoon is over.
