Maine has become the latest state to approve state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries. It joins New Mexico and Rhode Island. But locally-allowed (or not) dispensaries are the rule in California, Colorado, and Washington. Both paths have their pluses and minuses.
The 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference kicks off tomorrow evening, which means we'll be in Albuquerque for the rest of the week. It also means I probably won't be posting for a few days, because my fingers will be caked with enchilada sauce (and if anyone knows where to get good Mexican food in Albuquerque, please hook me up in comments).
If you're going to the conference, please keep an eye out for me and say hi. I always enjoy meeting readers, so feel free to get all up in my business. The best place to find me is at the premiere of the new Flex Your Rights film 10 Rules For Dealing With Police, which I co-wrote and can’t wait to unveil. It's going down on Thursday at 8:45pm. It's so cool, you should really just get in the car right now and start driving to New Mexico.
Anyway, the blog should back in action next week. If anything huge happens in the meantime, I'm sure Pete Guither will be all over it.
Enemies of medical marijuana have almost completely run out of talking points, and now they just lost one of their favorite remaining arguments:
HOUSTON --- The American Medical Association (AMA) voted today to reverse its long-held position that marijuana be retained as a Schedule I substance with no medical value. The AMA adopted a report drafted by the AMA Council on Science and Public Health (CSAPH) entitled, "Use of Cannabis for Medicinal Purposes," which affirmed the therapeutic benefits of marijuana and called for further research. [Opposing Views]
I wonder how long it will take for the DEA to correct their website.
The CBS debate between Judge James Gray and David Evans continues today, and you are going to absolutely love it (if your idea of a good time is listening to a judge explain why the drug war doesn’t work, while a frustrated drug warrior sputters redundantly).
I think my favorite part is an attempt by Evans to explain all the reasons why you can’t compare alcohol prohibition with drug prohibition. This one topped his list:
(1) During prohibition the government sought to restrict the consumption of alcohol although lacking the consensus of the nation. Even during Prohibition most people had experience with and accepted alcohol. That is not the same today for illicit drugs. Prohibition went against the national consensus whereas the current drug policies do not.
Apparently, David Evans hasn’t checked out the comment section yet. Incredibly, he appears not to even understand why he was invited to participate in a marijuana legalization debate in the first place. Literally, the whole point of this dialogue is to indulge the raging debate over marijuana policy that now grips the nation. If there were a "national consensus" in favor of marijuana prohibition, you wouldn't have spent the last two days on the CBS website arguing against legalization.
CBS is hosting an excellent point-counterpoint discussion about legalizing marijuana, featuring Judge James Gray of LEAP and David Evans of the Drug Free America Foundation. You rarely get to see the debate unfold in this much detail, so it's a very illuminating dialogue, even though Evans has thus far failed to actually address Gray's main arguments. Judge Gray just laid down the law in his last entry, so we'll find out tomorrow if Evans has anything left.
On a side note, my attention was immediately drawn to the pictures of Gray and Evans that appear at the top of the page. Judge Gray appears in full color, while Evans is in black & white. This struck me as the perfect metaphor for the debate that follows.
Drug policy reformers did a double-take today when the following "Budget Suggestions" were discovered on the website of Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell:
January 9, 2009: Decriminalize marijuana – allow for medicinal purposes and collect taxes on it purchase. Create a tax stamp for these packages – anyone caught with a bag of marijuana without the stamp should face harsher penalties than someone caught with a bag with a stamp.
February 3, 2009: Legalize marijuana and have the Department of Agriculture grow it for sale in 1 ounce bags -- sell it over the Internet.
March 2, 2009: Increase revenue by legalizing marijuana and administering its sale and tax to be sold in pharmacies as well as in liquor stores. Apply law enforcement standards currently used for alcohol. This would save money in not having to chase drug dealers and generate huge revenues.
This is surprising stuff to see on the site of a governor who'd vetoed medical marijuana legislation. And, unfortunately, it was too good to be true.
It turns out these ideas came from unnamed current or former state employees as part of a program called the Innovative Ideas Initiative. They're not endorsed by the Governor's Office, although a much better job could have been done to explain the source of the proposals when posting them under a picture of Gov. Rell. It wasn't until reporters started calling her office today asking about marijuana legalization that the whole story emerged.
So I suppose you could argue that there's not much of a story here, but I do find it amusing to see the debate over marijuana legalization popping up where you least expect it.
Pete Guither caught this strange quote from deputy drug czar Tom McClellan in an AP story about expanding drug treatment:
McLellan, insisting he’s not "a wild-eyed liberal," said expanding treatment wouldn’t negate the war on drugs.
"Law enforcement is necessary, but it’s not sufficient," he said.
It's just a stupid and completely unnecessary attempt to label anyone with concerns about our heavy-handed drug policy. The whole concept that only liberals care about this is pathetically simple-minded and dishonest, as anyone who's been watching FOX Newslately could tell you. By McClellan's strained logic, his own boss, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, would also be a "wild-eyed liberal" for criticizing the idea of fighting a "war on drugs."
Anyone endeavoring to define the political identity of the drug reform movement is wasting their breath. The idea that our drug policy sucks is far too widespread to be contained within any vague political parameters and I'm quite sure Tom McClellan knows that, even if he conveniently pretends not to.
No concept is more central to any defense of our oppressive marijuana laws than the argument that use will increase dramatically under legalization. Opposition to marijuana reform rests in its entirety upon the premise that marijuana = bad & more marijuana = more bad.
And yet, there exists a powerfully simple example of how wrong that is. There's really nothing groundbreaking about this latest data, but I can only assume it's surprising new information for anyone who thinks legalization is a one-way ticket to oblivion:
Dutch among lowest cannabis users in Europe-report
AMSTERDAM, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The Dutch are among the lowest users of marijuana or cannabis in Europe despite the Netherlands' well-known tolerance of the drug, according to a regional study published on Thursday. Among adults in the Netherlands, 5.4 percent used cannabis, compared with the European average of 6.8 percent, according to an annual report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, using latest available figures. [Reuters]
When it comes to debating the impact of allowing marijuana sales, there is no data more important, more relevant and more revealing than this. The Dutch people can buy marijuana anytime they want, but a huge majority of them choose not to. All of this serves to illustrate a very simple, yet significant, fact about marijuana that everyone should know: people who don’t want marijuana will not use it no matter how legal and available it is.
The very idea that there exists a vast population of potential marijuana users deterred solely by the drug's illegal status is just wrong. That's not how this works. You see, no one respects our marijuana laws. People who enjoy marijuana will overwhelmingly make their own decision about it and the only thing the government can do is literally rip it out of our freedom-loving hands one at a time. We all know how badly that effort has played out.
The bottom line here is that when we debate marijuana policy, we are not weighing competing visions of how much marijuana use is acceptable in our society. The only question to be addressed – the only issue we have control over – is whether it makes moral and practical sense to punish people for marijuana. We don't get to decide how many people will use it. But it's our decision how to treat those who do.
Jann Gumbiner, Ph.D. has a post at Psychology Today pondering how young people will be affected by marijuana legalization. She has more questions than answers, but it's interesting to see what concerns come up for a parent who's undecided on the issue.
Her conclusion strikes me as quite sensible:
As a parent, I ask myself, "what are the dangers to teens?" And, what are the likely scenarios? If pot is still illegal to anyone under 21, how will teens get it? I think the most likely scenario is the same as beer and cigarettes. Older brothers and sisters, with IDs, will legally buy packaged marijuana cigarettes at gas stations and share them with younger ones on Friday night parties. As a parent, I ask myself, "how do I feel about this?" And... after a little thought, I actually feel better knowing my child is with trusted friends, ingesting measured substances than on a corner at night buying an illegal substance from a stranger.
Bingo. It's a pretty rational conclusion, but one that can only be reached by accepting the reality that marijuana will be available with or without legalization. Too often, opponents of regulating marijuana sales appear to believe that it only becomes available once it's legal. I'm afraid it's not nearly that simple.
As a teenager, I witnessed firsthand a world in which it was easier to get marijuana than alcohol. I don't just say this now because it suits my agenda; it's the truth. If my friends wanted booze for a party, they planned days ahead. If they wanted pot, they just made a phone call. The difference was that old, but very true, cliché that drug dealers don’t check ID. That's why research has repeatedly shown that teenagers have easier access to marijuana than beer. What can never be quantified, however, are all the other harms that go along with this vast underground, underage drug economy that continues to thrive thanks to marijuana prohibition.
To be clear, I doubt this is the argument that's going to turn things around. If that were true it would have happened already. People don’t seem to get this, maybe because those darn kids have a nasty habit of not telling the grown-ups about their pot hook-ups. Instead, I would simply add this to the long list of reasons that legalization will work even better than most people expect.
That's right parents. Prepare to be pleasantly surprised.
If you wanna hear drug czar Gil Kerlikowske getting served by random people who hate the drug war, check out this NPR interview. As soon as the phones open, Mr. K gets put on the defensive by a social worker, a physician and various others who aren't too fond of the war on drugs. Right on, radio people.
But I think my favorite part is this clueless attempt to explain America's obsession with marijuana:
KRIS (Caller): Thank you. I was wondering - I'm 62 years old, and when I was in high school, I didn't even know what marijuana was. And I'm wondering why is it so rampant now, and it never used to be?
Mr. KERLIKOWSKE: Well, I wish I had a good answer for that, Rachel. I am - I actually just about two years younger than you are, and so I'm afraid I would put myself in exactly the same mindset. But I think that marijuana is popularized on television shows. It is popularized in media. There is only one antidrug media message out there, and that's the one that the Office of the National Drug Control Policy actually funds, and that - the antidrug.com…
Has it occurred to you, sir, that TV shows and the media are talking about marijuana because people are interested in it, not the other way around? It wasn't the press that popularized marijuana, it was the people.
But this isn’t just about the popularity of pot, either. The reason marijuana is in the news constantly isn't just because everyone loves smoking it. This is happening because our marijuana policy is such a complete disaster that every single one of us is affected by it. If there weren't a massive war against marijuana being fought everyday throughout the country, then there wouldn’t be nearly as much to talk about, I assure you.
Stop the Drug War (DRCNet) is an international organization working for an end to drug prohibition worldwide and for interim policy reform in US drug laws and criminal justice system. Read more about DRCNet.
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