Personal Marijuana Use

According to a recent news item making international headlines, a journalist in a forthcoming BBC 'documentary' will "inject" herself with the "main ingredient" of so-called "skunk cannabis" in an effort to warn viewers of the "dramatic" and "unpleasant" effects of marijuana.

…Exeter Police Chief Richard Kane, among others, is adamantly opposed. "If we reduce the penalty for small amounts of marijuana, it will eventually lead to legalization and I think that's heading in the wrong direction," he said last week.

Nashua Police Chief Donald Conley also said it would be a mistake to take the sting out of the law. [Boston Globe]

But Conley said it is rare for first-time offenders to get jail time for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

"As far as someone getting arrested and their lives being ruined, I don't think that's the case," he said. "Employers are more forgiving in this day and age, and police prosecutors frequently reduce marijuana cases down to violations…"

Travel guru Rick Steves wants America to take a cue from Europe and start talking seriously about marijuana.

Too many lives, according to Steves, are ruined by criminal penalties associated with pot possession, and too much law enforcement and too many court resources are tied up focusing on cannabis as a legal problem instead of a health issue.

Steves, who built his Edmonds travel business into a nationally known television show with travel books and tours, is now taking his marijuana message to the masses, too.

Wednesday, together with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, Steves introduced a half-hour infomercial-style program he hosts called "Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation." The program is available on Comcast on Demand, and promoters hope it will soon debut on local television stations. [Seattlepi.com]

Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman is absolutely right that decriminalizing marijuana will save taxpayers boatloads of money and free up limited resources so that police can focus on preventing violent crime, as he pointed out in his recent column "A truth Obama won't dare tell" (Commentary, Feb. 3).

But it's absolutely wrong of Chapman to say, as he does in the column, that endorsing this common-sense policy change "would be considered political suicide" for a presidential candidate like U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

To the contrary, a CNN/Time Magazine poll taken in 2002 shows that 72 percent of Americans support marijuana decriminalization.

Obama's latest position opposing decriminalization will only win him favor with the mere 19 percent of Americans who, according to the poll, favor the continued arrest and jailing of otherwise law-abiding citizens who happen to use marijuana.

Supporting the criminalization of responsible adults is not only a senseless and cruel public policy, it is politically foolish. [Chicago Tribune]

Of course, polling data like this doesn’t necessarily reflect precisely how those same people will behave at the ballot box. And, as Pete Guither explains, any candidate endorsing reform faces the prospect of vicious mischaracterizations from their opposition.

All of this is true. Still, success in American politics has always depended on a candidate's ability to gracefully negotiate divisive issues. Just as an opponent's harsh attacks might chip away support for a controversial policy position, so may passionate words and sound reasoning reshape public opinion itself, turning polling data on its head and bringing legitimacy to ideas long relegated to the political fringes.

In that rare instant when the pre-written script is abandoned and the truth is permitted to speak for a moment on its own behalf, we have no frame of reference for the political viability of marijuana reform in presidential politics. The "foolishness" Tom describes is the mistake of recognizing common ground within the electorate and declining to indulge and nurture public values which run parallel to the candidate's own.

I suspect that the moment an already exciting and change-driven candidate takes the marijuana issue on the offensive and challenges Americans to envision a better policy, the popular preconceptions of our pundits and politicians will be disproved. If I am correct, then the biggest obstacle facing any politician who'd like to reform our marijuana laws is nothing other than his/her own willingness to throw the first punch.

Famed NY Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes won't get to celebrate his Super Bowl victory with his brother. As The New York Times reports, Mark Tynes is serving 27 years in prison for selling pot.

"I'm not embarrassed about it," Lawrence Tynes said. "Everyone has skeletons in the closet or whatever. You could go in that locker room and find 50 other stories probably similar to mine. He’s my brother. I love him. He made some bad choices. Rightfully so, he should be punished. But the extent of the punishment, to me, is ridiculous."

So how do you catch 27 years for a marijuana crime? Prior convictions don't help, but it seems that refusing to rat out other people was the biggest factor here:

But Mark Tynes had a record, including felony convictions for possession. And he "paid a heavy penalty for refusing to cooperate," a managing assistant United States attorney told The Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal after sentencing. The others cooperated fully. They became government witnesses. Lawrence Tynes watched as each testified against his brother.

And as tragic as it is to think that selling a relatively harmless substance like marijuana can land someone in prison for decades, consider also that Tynes story never would have been told had his brother not kicked the field goal that put the Giants in the Super Bowl.

Whether they are sitting behind bars or merely sitting around after losing aid for college, the victims of America's brutal war on marijuana typically suffer in silence, injured and marginalized by laws far more potent and destructive than the drug they prohibit.

At first, Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that the candidate had "always" supported decriminalizing marijuana, suggesting his 2004 statement was correct. Then after the Times posted copies of the video on its Web site today, his campaign reversed course and declared he does not support eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana possession and use.

"If you're convicted of a crime, you should be punished, but that we are sending far too many first-time, non-violent drug users to prison for very long periods of time, and that we should rethink those laws," Vietor said. The spokesman blamed confusion over the meaning of decriminalization for the conflicting answers. [Washington Times]

Indeed, as Pete Guither notes, no one is really sure what "decriminalization" actually means, which likely explains the Obama campaign's ultimate unwillingness to be associated with the term.

And that tells you everything you need to know about why meaningful debate of our marijuana laws is continuously excluded from mainstream politics. Since the relevant vocabulary words have no universally accepted definition, candidates attempting to discuss marijuana would be forced to use entire sentences or even paragraphs to express their opinions. This is not something they will do voluntarily.

Note, for example, that everything we know about the major candidates' drug policy positions has emerged as a result of someone explicitly asking them. The tortured evolution of Obama's views on marijuana occurred only because this information was demanded of him. First, Bill Maher forced Chris Dodd to discuss the issue, resulting in Dodd's endorsement of marijuana decrim. Then, Tim Russert asked other democratic contenders whether they disagreed with Dodd. The front-runners sheepishly raised their hands in opposition to even mild marijuana reform. Finally, when the Washington Times forced Obama to clarify his conflicting positions, Obama's campaign briefly endorsed reform before finally concluding that they opposed decrim even though they're still not sure what it is.

The conventional wisdom among my colleagues seems to be that Obama "gets" the drug war issue. Everything he says and does can be attributed to his presidential aspirations, I'm told, and we should be grateful that he at least flirts with criminal justice reform. That's fine as far as it goes, but I continue to question the fundamental political wisdom of refusing to talk about marijuana. It's an issue people care about. It's an issue that gets headlines. And it's an issue that's been handled about as poorly as one could possibly imagine for a long long time.

I believe that marijuana reform, properly and passionately framed by an eloquent and viable candidate, could prove to be far less toxic than the brilliant campaign strategists in Washington D.C. collectively assume. And it is nauseating to consider that this terrible war on marijuana users owes its survival as much to a flawed political calculus as to the actual beliefs and convictions of those who sustain it.

"I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws," Mr. Obama told an audience during a debate at Northwestern University in 2004.

Obama's campaign is now standing by this earlier statement, claiming that the Senator has "always" supported marijuana decriminalization. This actually makes sense, because Obama's apparent opposition to decrim during the debate was triggered by a badly worded question from Tim Russert. As I said at the time, this all goes to show how a cheap soundbite approach to the marijuana discussion trivializes the issue and obscures any real difference of opinion.

Fortunately, now that Obama's position has been made perfectly clear, we face the possibility of a full-on marijuana debate between front-running presidential candidates. It could begin as soon as this evening during Obama's long-anticipated one-on-one face off with Hillary Clinton. Absent that, an Obama nomination would guarantee republican attacks on the marijuana issue, inevitably sucking this discussion into the political mainstream where it belongs.

Jacob Sullum argues correctly that decrim is a remarkably soft position by drug reform standards, but that fact will surely be lost on the blood-thirsty political attack machine that will be directed at Obama if he receives the democratic nomination. And I for one welcome every last nasty morsel of it, lest the debate over recreational marijuana use in America should be excluded entirely from presidential politics yet again.

Weak as it may be, Obama's is the best position on the marijuana issue taken by a viable presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter.

Update: Tragically, the Obama campaign has now reversed its position on decrim. Most of the above can be disregarded entirely.

DARWIN, Australia (AP) — An Australian teenager[*] blamed the influence of marijuana for his decision to steal two crocodiles and a monkey, local media reported Wednesday.
…

Watts said he planned to sell the stolen baby crocodiles and the marmoset but had been unable to find buyers, ABC reported.
…

Watts' lawyer told the court his client admitted it was a "dumb stoner" thing to do and had written to Crocodylus Park to apologize. [AP]

Marijuana isn't for everyone, to be sure, but most people are more than a few tokes away from busting into the zoo and stealing crocodiles. I think he's just embarrassed to admit that these are the sorts of things he generally feels inclined to do.

But there's also a revealing subplot here that's worth exploring. Consider that this young man snuck into the zoo high on marijuana, successfully captured two crocodiles and a monkey, and escaped undetected. It's a rather impressive outcome compared to the carnage that ensues when drunken zoo-goers attempt to interact with the animals.

A victim of the recent San Francisco tiger attack was at twice the legal limit when he taunted the tiger until it leapt over the wall and attacked him. A drunken Lithuanian was hospitalized in May after climbing into a Giraffe exhibit and getting trampled. Then there's the intoxicated Chinese man who entered the Panda cage at the Beijing Zoo to "hug" the Panda and ended up biting the bear when it attacked him. Not to mention the drunken Ukrainian who tried to show off for friends by taking on a caged grizzly and was nearly killed, or the corpse found in the grizzly den at the Belgrade Zoo during an annual beer festival.

Clearly, from a harm reduction standpoint, marijuana is the safer choice for zoo-going trouble-makers.

*Since his name was omitted, I've been unable to verify whether the culprit was Corey Delaney.