Feature: Medical Marijuana -- A Progress Report
A little more than a decade after California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, making it the first state to approve the use of medical marijuana, the movement continues its slow spread across the country. Now, medical marijuana is legal in 12 states (with varying degrees of protection), and roughly 50 million people -- or about one out of six Americans -- live in those states.
federally-approved patient Irv Rosenfeld hands his empty federal medical marijuana canister to Montel Williams, while Reps. Sam Farr, Maurice Hinchey and Ron Paul observe
While it may be a bit of an exaggeration to speak of a pincer movement aimed at the heartland, medical marijuana is on the move. In addition to the 12 states where it is legal, a number of other states, including Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and New York have seen progress in state legislatures and are inching closer to approving medical marijuana. Meanwhile, a medical marijuana initiative is getting underway in Michigan, and activists are eyeing similar initiative campaigns in a handful of other states.
But at the same time, the federal government remains staunchly opposed to medical marijuana. The Justice Department and the DEA continue to harass patients and providers, especially in California, where a loosely-written Prop. 215 has led to the most wide-open medical marijuana scene in the country. While the DEA, sometimes working with recalcitrant state and local law enforcement officials, has been raiding dispensaries for years, this week the agency unveiled a new tactic against them: It sent letters to dozens of Los Angeles area landlords who rent to dispensaries, threatening them with civil forfeiture and possible criminal action if they continue to rent to what the DEA considers criminal drug trafficking organizations.
Americans for Safe Access demonstration
But the federal government is under attack by medical marijuana advocates coming from several different angles. In Congress, the most significant piece of medical marijuana-related legislation is the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which would bar the use of federal funds to persecute patients and providers in states where it is legal. Hearings and a vote in the House on Hinchey-Rohrabacher are expected in the next week or two. While approval appears unlikely this year, supporters, including the group spearheading the effort, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), expect to pick up votes and edge ever closer to the needed majority.
In the meantime, there are three legal challenges to the federal hard line on medical marijuana:
- Aided by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project, University of Massachusetts-Amherst researcher Dr. Lyle Craker is suing the DEA in an attempt to break the government monopoly on the production of medical marijuana for research purposes. In February, a DEA administrative law judge ruled that Craker's request would be "in the public interest." The DEA is appealing that ruling.
- Apparently acting on the notion that the best defense is a good offense, the medical marijuana defense organization Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is suing HHS and the FDA over their position that "marijuana has no accepted medical value." Using the little-known Data Quality Act, which mandates that federal agencies set policies on the basis of sound science, ASA filed suit in February after two years of fruitless petitioning at the agencies. Yesterday, a federal judge heard arguments in a government motion to dismiss the case. An ASA motion for summary judgment will be heard next month.
- A 2002 petition to reschedule marijuana as a Schedule III, IV, or V drug, filed by marijuana scholar and activist Jonathan Gettman that has been languishing for years awaits a government response this month. Current federal law considers marijuana a Schedule I drug with no accepted medical value.
Dr. Ethan Russo addresses Patients Out of Time medical marijuana conference
Groups differ on the utility of acting at the state versus the federal level, over whether initiatives or legislative action is preferable, and over who should be the public face of the movement, among other issues. For some, even winning more victories at the state level is not as important as changing the parameters of the debate.
For MPP, which is hard at work in the states as well as on Capitol Hill, meaningful change will result from continuing to hammer away at the federal level, said Dan Bernath, MPP assistant director of communications. "There will probably be a vote on Hinchey-Rohrabacher within a week or two, and we think we will pick up at least 20 votes," he said.
But with the amendment having garnered 163 votes last year, an additional couple of dozen votes would still leave it well short of the 218 votes needed to ensure passage in the House. "It is not likely to happen this year," Bernath conceded, "but it is important that we continue to build momentum for the future. The safer it looks for politicians, the easier it is for them to vote for it."
While passage of Hinchey-Rohrabacher would not change the federal marijuana laws, it would effectively protect patients, Bernath said. "If the Department of Justice loses funding to go after medical marijuana in the states, that would be 100% protection for patients."
ASA, while supporting Hinchey-Rohrabacher, was quick to point out that the protection provided by Hinchey-Rohrabacher would only apply to patients in states where medical marijuana is legal. "Hinchey has been something for certain drug reform organizations and proponents to rally around to help turn the tide on medical marijuana," said ASA spokesman Kris Hermes, "but it is certainly not the be all and end all. It would unfortunately only protect patients and providers in those 12 states, but does little to address the concerns of doctors, patients, and caregivers in the rest of the country."
More promising for ASA, Hermes said, are the federal lawsuits. "The ruling by the DEA judge in the Craker case certainly adds to the growing chorus in support of doing further research on the subject," he argued. "And if we can win our case against HHS and the FDA, that would only build pressure on the government's position that marijuana has no medicinal value."
Some patient-oriented groups would rather concentrate on medium-term movement-building than short-term political victories. "While we accept the strategy of most people working within the movement, which is to change the law and get the patients their medicine, we don't always agree with the tactics," said Al Byrne, spokesman for Patients Out of Time, which has concentrated on educating the public and especially the medical profession about medical marijuana. "We need to let educators lead the movement into the future, not lobbyists, lawyers, and legislators," he argued. "Picking up the states one by one is worthwhile, but after a while it's sort of redundant. We don't think we will see real meaningful change until the medical community accepts marijuana as medicine."
Patients Out of Time has for the past several years worked to bring the medical community on board through its series of conferences on cannabis therapeutics, which bring together scientists, researchers, and medical professionals from around the country and the world to discuss the latest advances. POT's Fifth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics is set for next April in California.
Winning more medical marijuana victories at the state level is not redundant for MPP. To get change at the federal level will require more states getting aboard the medical marijuana bandwagon, said Bernath. "The way change will happen is that when enough states adopt their own medical marijuana laws, the federal government will no longer be able to ignore this."
To that end, MPP will continue to push for passage of state medical marijuana laws, sometimes through the initiative and referendum process and sometimes through the legislative process. In Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New York, medical marijuana legislation got some traction this year. "We can pick up next year where we left off," said Bernath.
DPA executive director Ethan Nadelmann, whose organization is working on medical marijuana bills legislation in Connecticut and New Jersey, was quick to add those states to the list. DPA sees more bang for the buck in legislative efforts than initiatives, he said. "Legislative campaigns cost money, but not as much as ballot initiatives, and they have the advantage of generating enormous amounts of free media," he said. "Since a major part of the medical marijuana effort is about public education, the more hearings you have and the more media they generate, the better."
Bernath also pointed to MPP involvement in a Michigan medical marijuana initiative campaign that is just getting underway and suggested there may be more initiatives in other states. "The polls are looking pretty good in Arizona, Idaho, and Ohio," he said.
"This is where MPP and DPA have a slightly different philosophy," said Nadelmann. "I hope the Michigan initiative wins, and it would be helpful if it did, but as a matter of resource allocation, I'm skeptical about the value added of spending all that money to win one more state. But that's a judgment call," he added.
NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre drew a distinction between states that accepted medical marijuana through the initiative process and those that accepted it through the legislative process. "The initiatives covered a greater number of stakeholders and are more functional than the ensuing laws, which are very narrow in scope, serve fewer stakeholders, and haven't changed the federal dynamic of those states' representation in Washington," he argued. "If you look at who is supporting Hinchey-Rohrabacher, it is the delegations from the Western and Rocky Mountain states where support is strongest -- the states where medical marijuana came about through the initiative process."
On the other hand, St. Pierre acknowledged, states that have legalized medical marijuana through the legislative process have fewer problems with recalcitrant law enforcement. "In large parts of initiative states like California, Washington, and Oregon, the police simply ignore the law," he pointed out. "But when a medical marijuana bill goes through the legislature, law enforcement is part of the process. The police got to have their say. They lost, but at least they were sitting at the table."
Eleven years ago, no patients were protected by state medical marijuana laws. Now, some 50 million Americans live in states where they could be, and that's progress. But it also means that some 250 million Americans continue without the protection of state medical marijuana laws, and despite tentative advances in the South and the Midwest, today those areas remain without any such laws. In the last few years, progress has been made, but at a painfully slow pace. Perhaps that will change next year, with a number of states well into legislative consideration of medical marijuana bills.
And perhaps things will change at the federal level the year after that, especially if the Democrats extend and deepen their control of Congress. But at this juncture, the only likely federal changes will come if one of the lawsuits turns out victorious, and that means going back to the states and whittling away at medical marijuana prohibition one statehouse or one popular vote at a time.
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the 70s
Comment posted by borden on Sat, 07/14/2007 - 10:22amIn the 70s, I'm told (and I've read), there was a belief that marijuana legalization was basically around the corner and all but given. That's not the belief now in our movement. So that's one big difference between now and the 70s.
Another big difference is that public support for legalization marijuana is higher now than in the 70s (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/201/pollresults.shtml).
Three other major differences is that our movement (collectively) now has a broad-based approach that takes on policies toward other drugs, harm reduction (driven by the AIDS crisis) and some of us calling for legalization; we have the medical marijuana issue; and we have a multiplicity of organizations, none of them with exactly the same set of benefits and vulnerabilities.
The 70s were also followed by the Reagan presidency, and a conservative political movement of growing effectiveness and power, major outside factors that basically shut the effort down. I hope we don't face another such development, but I also don't think they'll be able to shut us down this time. I agree that we should study the past to attempt to avoid making mistakes that may have been made before, and to try to prepare against possible pitfalls along the way.
That said, just as I don't see how the facts are consistent with the idea that no one is being protected by medical marijuana laws, I don't see how what's happening today is the same as what happened in the 70s.
David Borden, Executive Director
StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network
Washington, DC
http://stopthedrugwar.org
We have to deal with people and the world the way they are.
Comment posted by borden on Sun, 07/15/2007 - 10:38pmThose of us in leadership positions find we have to deal with the world the way it is and not the way we want it to be. The tree isn't going to fall this year or this decade. Most of us feel that being able to actually change laws and help people in the present instead of an undefined future gets us taken more seriously by the public than merely standing outside and shouting, and helps to build the movement. We need to shout out the truth too, but that's not a good argument for not getting what changes we can get in the meanwhile. The important thing is that efforts to also advance the full legalization viewpoint also happen.
Unfortunately the public isn't with us yet. That's not going to change overnight; it's going to continue changing gradually, until the point is reached when things are ready to transform more quickly, but no one knows when that will be. It's easy to say things like "anyone pretending to be a leader" will do what you want them to do, but that's really not a well thought out sentiment -- particularly because it doesn't acknowledge the reality of where politics and opinion are at in this country and how slowly social change has happened in every other major issue. Leaders have to meet people where they are at now, not where we hope they will get to someday; and leaders have to work with the world the way the world actually works and not the way we wish it would work.
David Borden, Executive Director
StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network
Washington, DC
http://stopthedrugwar.org
Okay, what's your plan?
Comment posted by borden on Mon, 07/16/2007 - 5:06pmBrian,
It's easy to say that everyone who who is confronted with the evidence agrees that the drug war isn't working. That's mostly true. But how does one get the evidence in front of 300 million people? We already know that merely putting it in front of politicians doesn't work in most cases, because of politics. We don't have the hundreds of millions of dollars, or perhaps billions of dollars, that would be needed to run the kind of ad campaign necessary to raise awareness to that degree by itself. The Internet reaches a lot of people, but that takes a long time.
And so we are dependent on the mainstream media. And unfortunately, the mainstream media does not see legalization as a newsworthy issue right now, for the most part. That is a major obstacle -- a highly successful writer who is sympathetic and who used to work at a number of major news publications told me this.
If you're going to say that DRCNet should be doing more to educate people about prohibition/legalization itself, I might agree with you, we want to do more in that category of our work. But if you're going to say that instead of lobbying for things that could actually happen now, we should instead be lobbying for a full legalization bill in Congress, even just for marijuana -- well I think also lobbying for such a bill might be worth considering, but you should expect to get maybe three cosponsors, if for that matter anyone is even willing to introduce the bill. Unfortunately marijuana smokers are not likely to come out of the woodwork to demand that Congress pass such a bill, because people just aren't like that most of the time.
One way to get the issue into the mainstream media is to run initiatives as MPP has done in Nevada. If I had millions of dollars to spend on initiatives, I might do something like that too, and hope that each time we tried it the percentage voting yes continued to increase. I'm not sure that would gain any recognition from you, however, as you didn't seem to consider it worth even a mention in your blog post that criticized MPP. You did, however, see fit to slam them for the Playboy Mansion fundraisers -- which you described as mere "parties" -- without mentioning the fact that there were fundraiser that in fact raised quite a lot of money.
We could do a direct action blocking the DEA office in Washington, make them arrest a bunch of us, and hope that that helps to spark some positive discussion. If done well, it probably would spark some useful discussion in the media, one friend of mine thinks a lot. But then it would be over, and we'd be left with what is really just one positive contribution to the effort but not the quick, dramatic, change that you say you're looking for.
You also have ignored the point made by myself and at least one other person posting here that every other major social reform in history has taken many decades to accomplish. Why do you think this issue could advance any differently than any other issue?
If you have any actual ideas of what we can do to quickly accomplish the monumental task of reaching America at large with this information that we have, or changing things quickly in some other way, by all means share them with the class. In the meanwhile, I am going to proceed with the only strategy that at this point seems possible to me, which is to use educational strategies to raise awareness of the consequences of prohibition, while lobbying for reforms that can be accomplished in the present and building the movement.
David Borden, Executive Director
StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network
Washington, DC
http://stopthedrugwar.org
bill numbers and other issues
Comment posted by borden on Tue, 07/31/2007 - 2:20pmNot sure if anyone is still reading this thread or not, and I don't know who posted the last comment, so I can't reply by email. If you're reading this, feel free to get in touch.
The Hinchey amendment did not have a bill number because amendments don't have bill numbers. They eventually get assigned amendment numbers, generally during the day on which they are going to come up. So there is nothing anyone could have done to change that. The instructions that we and other organizations put out -- refer to it as Rep. Hinchey's amendment to the Science-Commerce-Justice appropriations bill (if I remember correctly) -- were correct instructions, and were the only ones available.
LEAP speakers are very effective, but there is no possibility of getting a large percentage of the voting public to sit down and listen to their speeches. That's the core problem with Brian's argument: Yes, we should be able to persuade enough people to get the laws changed, and not only for marijuana. But only if we can reach them, and given the resources that are available to our movement currently, that can only be done in relatively slow ways. In LEAP's case, the hope is that by influencing politically active audiences who influence other people's opinions, the word will gradually spread out into larger society. But that is by definition a slow process. Brian argued that the Internet is free and so we can reach everyone. Sorry, that's not true, you can post on any chat group you want to, but that takes time and time is limited, the only way to reach everyone is to spam them, and most of your emails will end up in spam filter boxes and then your site will get blacklisted and you won't reach anyone.
Advertising, as you've advocated, would require a colossal amount of money to be able to do this effectively. If SAFER's ads were effective (I don't remember the details, but I'll take your word for it and I can believe it, I seem to remember that they were), it's because they were done in a targeted way during a specific campaign, which made them newsworthy -- there was something current for people to talk about. Outside of the context of specific campaigns, ads don't do a lot unless multiple millions of dollars are put in, in order to air them repeatedly, and frequently, over an extended period of time. I would be hesitant to embark on an ad campaign, other than as a test, unless someone were willing to commit to providing that level of resources for the program. Remember, we don't get to put the money wherever we want, generally the big funders give money to the programs about which they are persuaded. And if you don't spend the money the way you said you would, they don't fund you the next time.
As far as the negative view of MPP, I really find this viewpoint unjustified. I know the people there, and I know that they are in fact fighting for the cause, they were anxiously sitting up waiting to see how the vote turned out, etc. The Hinchey vote didn't go as well as we hoped it would -- we're all disappointed -- but there are other campaigns they've been involved in or spearheaded that have led to victories. So when I see someone like Brian completely ignoring all of those and making the claim that MPP or any other group in the movement isn't doing anything -- well, I know that just isn't true, so it kind of irks me, and sometimes I speak up.
Finally, I feel that unless you have done extensive analysis, not only of the votes on Hinchey, but of the work that groups did prior to the vote to try to influence it, I don't feel that you are in a position to venture an informed opinion on how hard a group tried, how how well crafted their strategy was, or whether or not there was actually a chance. There are some important factors that were at work that affected things. First, there were 15 members of Congress who voted Yes on Hinchey in 2006, but who are no longer serving in the Congress. Just to break even, we had to get 15 new people on board. Second, we all know (because it has been widely discussed on news media) that the Democrats are scared silly about 2008 and are anxious to avoid doing anything that could complicate their fight sfor the White House and for keeping and growing their new majorities in Congress. There has been a lot of criticism from the liberal end that they are not doing enough to try to end US involvement in the war in Iraq. Well, some of the politics that are affecting that doubtless affect other things too, maybe including this. Third, many of the newly-elected Democrats are from centrist or conservative districts in which the voting margins shifted only slightly to put them in office. These are the hardest kinds of Democrats to bring on board with anything that could be portrayed by a future political opponent as "soft on drugs." They want to stay in office and the rest of the Democrats want them to stay in office too. So I don't think it's surprising at all that as many of the freshmen Democrats voted against us as did -- we got over half of them, and in the circumstances that might not be bad, I'm not really sure. There were several Yes votes from last year that turned into No votes this year, and people are still trying to interpret that; many of them were from the Congressional Black Caucus, and that seems a little strange as overall support in the CBC for this has been strong (and mostly still is).
I don't want to be an apologist here, but the fact is that a number of organizations really went all out to try to influence this vote, a lot of our members lobbied and lots of other work was done. This may indeed be a time to question whether the Hinchey amendment strategy should be continued, but in my opinion it's also a time to thank the people who have been working hard on it for their efforts rather than issue unsupportable condemnations of them!
Ultimately it's the members of Congress who voted No who are to blame for the failure of the amendment. Unfortunately, the Democrats, while sympathetic to much of what we are trying to accomplish, do not consider our issue a priority. The more we lobby them, the more likely it is that they will, so I really appreciate your words about how important it is to participate in specific actions to Congress.
David Borden, Executive Director
StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network
Washington, DC
http://stopthedrugwar.org
Brian, I don't have all the
Comment posted by borden on Fri, 07/13/2007 - 5:24pmBrian,
I don't have all the stats in front of me, but as a start I would say that the fact that there are so many medical marijuana clubs still operating -- despite the raids there are literally hundreds of them, operating openly -- is proof that the laws are providing at least some measure of protection for people.
If the laws were providing no protection at all, as you claim, then all of the clubs would be long gone by now and their operators would all be in prison for marijuana distribution. It's not even a matter of new clubs opening to take the place of clubs that have shut, as happens with ordinary sellers of drugs under prohibition all the time. We're talking about most of the same clubs continuing to operate, continuously.
Also, despite Ed's multiple trials, the fact is that he was sentenced to only one day, instead of the five years he could have gotten -- a pretty big difference, in my opinion. And again, there are all the other people doing the same thing who have still never been charged at all, their clients who have not been arrested for possession, etc.
Clearly things are not all that we would want, but I don't see how the characterization of the medical marijuana laws as not protecting anyone is a justifiable one based on the facts. I also don't think the fact that not everyone is focused on one strategy is the kind of weakness you portray it as that can explain the apparently slow progress in the issue. I see that diversity as a source of strength -- different organizations taking on different aspects of the issue in different ways can mobilize different constituencies and get different things accomplished that all help to get us closer to the goal. And because we are actually getting laws changed -- and seeing real-world institutions open like the medical marijuana coops, state registries, etc. -- the perception of our movement is thereby transformed from one of fringe and irrelevant to being an acknowledged part of the policy process.
How long did it take to get rid of Jim Crow laws or to secure the vote for women? Decades and decades and decades and decades and decades... Social change takes a long time, especially when one is fighting against deeply-ingrained prejudices. That's the explanation for why we are still where we are at. I don't know if we have the best strategy or set of strategies in place for this moment in time, and we'll probably never know for sure, but even if we definitely had the very best strategy in place and were doing everything we could, change would still come slowly (most of the time), because that's just the way the world works.
David Borden, Executive Director
StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network
Washington, DC
http://stopthedrugwar.org