The number of criminal defendants in federal courts in the year ending last September 30 rose 3 percent to set a new record of 102,931, says...
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Many of the leading Republican contenders in the presidential race have pushed reformist 'smart on crime' agendas. But will those agendas survive if one of them sits in the White House?
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By Ted Gest
As critics call for an end to the Nixon-era get-tough approach to drugs, the White House announces a "national prevention strategy." But the real momentum for change will be driven by the states.
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By Stephen Gutwillig
Despite the defeat of Prop 19 in California, advocates of marijuana legalization say time is on their side.
The coming decade will be known as the decade of marijuana reform across the country.
The narrow defeat of California’s Proposition 19 initiative last November suggests why this is likely to be true. Championed by Oakland-based medical marijuana activists, Prop. 19 would have decriminalized the possession and cultivation of small amounts of marijuana by adults 21 and older. It also would have directly challenged the federal prohibition on marijuana by allowing cities and counties across the state to regulate and tax sales of marijuana to adults within their jurisdictions.
Easily the most-watched initiative on the 2010 ballot nationwide, Prop. 19 drew 46.5 percent of the vote, a new record for marijuana legalization. Attracting more than 4.6 million votes, it easily out-polled California’s ill-fated zillionaire Gubernatorial and Senate candidates, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, with a tiny fraction of their extraordinary war chests.
In the wake of the vote, national marijuana reform advocates were immediately heartened, if not emboldened, by the prospects for ending decades of failed, punitive prohibitionist policies. That’s because Prop. 19 fared surprisingly well in the face of a truly inhospitable electoral climate.
Midterm election voters traditionally skew older and more conservative than the much larger electorate that can be expected to vote in a Presidential election. While there had been hopes that a surge of younger reform-minded voters would defy conventional wisdom, the Prop. 19 campaign didn’t have nearly enough advertising dollars to shift entrenched voting patterns in a state as large as California.
In the face of these structural obstacles, the record-setting 46.5 percent flouted the expectations of most sophisticated political observers in the state.
What’s more, recent polling indicates just how close the marijuana reform issue is to widespread success.
Gallup has measured a 10-point jump nationally in the last decade in support of making marijuana legal, registering support from 46 percent of all Americans late last year. Significant majorities exist among Democrats and progressives, and across western states. The California electorate is particularly promising. A post-election survey revealed that half of all voters support marijuana legalization, including a startling 31 percent of those who voted against Prop. 19 . That last factoid suggests that some aspect of this particular initiative’s content—possibly the novelty of posting the issue on the ballot, met with disfavor among otherwise supportive voters last year.
No one can deny the remarkable demographic dimension of this reform movement. If young voters had comprised the same percentage of the electorate last month as they do in presidential election years, support for Prop. 19 would have reached 49 percent of the vote, clearly within striking distance of victory. What’s more, Newsweek found that a commanding 70 percent of voters under 30 nationally would support a Prop. 19-style reform in their state.
Even in defeat, Proposition 19 legitimized marijuana legalization as a serious, mainstream political issue. The international media coverage was intense, informed and incessant. What’s more, last year’s campaign served as a national template for building a new reform coalition that included prominent civil rights organizations and labor unions calling for an end to these wasteful, ineffective policies that also disproportionately target African Americans and Latinos.
As a result, a flurry of marijuana legalization initiatives is already on the drawing board in a number of states, primarily in the West, with an eye toward 2012. Californians, in particular, are likely to get another crack at ending marijuana prohibition in the nation’s most populous state. Research on voter attitudes and fundraising will determine just how many initiatives will actually make it to the ballot.
Nevertheless, expect to see marijuana reform efforts bubbling up across the country every two years for some time to come. Prop. 19 has created unprecedented momentum as we enter this new decade.
Stephen Gutwillig is California director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national advocacy organization and one of the principal supporters of Proposition 19.
Photo by Dustin Sacks via Flickr.
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However Californians vote on Nov 2, pot policy in the state will still be in a legal haze
One week from tomorrow, the nation’s most populous state may decriminalize marijuana. Polls indicate that California’s Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, otherwise known as Proposition 19, is supported by between 39 and 44 percent of likely voters.
But even if the proposition becomes law, California’s 338 separate police departments and 58 county sheriffs are likely to have the final word.
Several of the state’s law enforcement authorities, such as Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, have already signaled they will continue to enforce federal laws against possession and cultivation of marijuana—no matter what happens.
“You’re going to have massive confusion,” predicts Rodney Jones, Chief of Police in Fontana, California, a city of 200,000 located 50 miles east of Los Angeles.
Jones did not say how his own department would respond if the proposition passed, but Martin Mayer, general counsel for the California Police Chiefs Association (CPCA), says there are precedents for different enforcement approaches. Laws against fireworks, he points out, vary widely across the state. In some cities and countries they are a legal and taxable commodity, as marijuana would be if Prop 19 passes; but in others, fireworks are illegal.
Nevertheless, fireworks don’t push the same political buttons that marijuana does. Decriminalization of marijuana would not only put California at odds with national anti-drug policy but would challenge decades of moral strictures that consider pot the first step in a downward slide of addiction to harder drugs.
Either way, California police are sworn to uphold the laws of the state—and may find it difficult to rely on federal drug law to make local arrests. They may, however, find allies in local prosecutors.
“If a judge dismisses a marijuana case because of Prop 19, a prosecutor could appeal saying that the law the determination was based on is unconstitutional,” says Mayer.
Waiting on the Feds
Until recently, the Obama administration avoided weighing in directly on Prop 19. But on October 13, Attorney General Eric Holder, in a letter to a group of former administrators of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said that “regardless of the passage of this or similar legislation, the Department of Justice will remain firmly committed to enforcing the Controlled Substances Act in all states.” Holder was responding to a letter the group of nine had sent him on August 24, expressing their “grave concern” over Prop 19.
But what would such a federal crackdown actually look like?
Pretty much everyone agrees that Prop 19 would render California in blatant violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act, but no one seems to envision thousands of federal agents descending on the state to drag pot smokers—even those who take advantage of the new law and begin growing their own weed—from their homes.
Even outside California, support for legalization is at an all-time high: according to a 2009 Gallup poll, 44 percent of Americans favor dropping criminal penalties for the drug, up from just 12 percent in 1970. And although advocates on both sides debate everything from whether decriminalization will turn more kids into potheads, to how legal domestic cultivation will impact Mexican drug cartels, to whether taxing the state’s number one cash crop could help it climb from beneath a massive deficit, there is no doubt that the national conversation about pot has evolved. Last week former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders advocated legalizing marijuana for recreational use, and when the Los Angeles Times and other national publications cover marijuana they now often cover it as a lifestyle issue – focusing on growing the herb and intergeneration usage in families—instead of a health or law enforcement one.
Still, Asa Hutchinson, former administrator of the DEA, and a signatory of the letter to Holder, says that he and his colleagues hope the administration will sue the state of California to prevent the initiative from taking effect, just as they did in the wake of Arizona’s controversial immigration law.
“The logical first step is for the Department of Justice to file suit against the state,” says Hutchinson.
A key reason would be to head off similar marijuana decriminalization moves by other states. “I don’t imagine the feds wanting to have a patchwork of enforcement policies, all depending on the nuances of each state,” Hutchinson says.
And such a patchwork is indeed a possibility. In an email to The Crime Report Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, indicated that pro-decriminalization groups are ready for a long national fight.
“Win or lose on Prop 19, the plan is the same," writes Nadelmann, "which is to put the issue on the ballot wherever polls show a reasonable majority of the electorate in a state in favor, in those states that have the initiative process, and where elected officials are unwilling to move forward...economics, demographics and principle are all on our side.”
Indeed, if Prop 19 passes, Representative Peter Buckley of Oregon told The Crime Report he will introduce a similar measure in his state. And, according to a recent Wall Street Journal story, Democrats across the country are watching this race closely for just that reason: if marijuana gets Democrats to the polls (the same way gay marriage drives Republicans to vote), the party might support similar initiatives in 2012.
That may be why Holder’s letter made no specific promises of a lawsuit. In fact, in contrast to the passionate tone of the original DEA heads’ letter, it was a markedly tepid response.
“I don’t think the feds wants to get involved in this,” says Mayer. “But they’re being pushed. And I think Holder would look foolish after making that statement if he doesn’t challenge the law.”
Pot policy in flux
In some ways, California has already blurred the national template over drug policy. In 1996, the state approved Proposition 215, which legalized pot for medical use. In the nearly 15 years since, dispensaries have either thrived or been shuttered depending upon their locations. In Oakland, where dispensaries blend in among office buildings, the citizens even levied the nation’s first tax on the weed in 2009 , and the city council recently approved a measure allowing for industrial cultivation of marijuana.
And regardless of the outcome of Prop 19, California has already moved the goalposts on marijuana policy. On September 30, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a new law downgrading possession of less than an ounce of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a simple infraction, which, like a traffic ticket, carries only a $100 fine.
Some have argued that the move by the governor, who opposes Prop 19, erases the urgent need for legalization. However, supporters claim decriminalization would save millions by allowing police to concentrate on more serious crimes.
But police say they aren’t really spending resources on petty pot offenses anyway.
Lt. Jarrod Burguan of the San Bernadino Police Department told The Crime Report that even if Prop 19 passes, he doesn’t anticipate officers in his department changing the way they police, at least not right away.
“There are likely to be court challenges,” explains Lt. Burguan. “Once those are settled we will probably get specific guidelines from the Attorney General on how we should enforce the law.”
Deputy Chief Bill Blair of the Long Beach Police Department also says his department will likely take a wait-and-see attitude. “You’re breaking now ground with this,” says Blair. “We’re going to have to come up with guidelines for how officers deal with circumstances” such as entering a citizen’s house or searching a car and finding marijuana. But, Blair adds, his officers are already walking a fine line since September 30.
Much, says Blair, depends on who wins the race for attorney general. Both candidates, Steve Cooley and Kamala Harris are officially opposed to Prop 19. In a recent debate, Harris was non-committal when asked to give details about her response should the measure pass, but Cooley was clear, saying he believed it was “unconstitutional” and “preempted by federal law.”
Until then, Lt. Burguan says, officers will probably keep “doing what they’re doing” when they stop civilians who have less than an ounce of pot: “We just write a ticket and send them on their way.”
But police encounter pot constantly, and according to pro-Prop 19 advocacy group NORML, there were more than 78,000 arrests for a marijuana offense in California in 2008, the largest number since 1976; just over 61,000 were for misdemeanors.
And there are plenty of unsolved issues. Walt Tibbet, chief of police in Fairfield, California, a city of 100,000 about 50 miles northwest of San Francisco, worries that if Prop 19 passes his deputies will have their hands tied when it comes to marijuana-related DUIs. Unlike with alcohol impairment, which can be accurately measured on the spot with a breathalyzer, marijuana use can only be as accurately detected by a more invasive blood or hair sample test, which can’t exactly be performed curbside.
“The problem with this initiative (is) it sets no standards” for impairment, says Tibbet. “We’re concerned about bus drivers and pilots. What will be our response? How can we maintain a drug-free workplace?”
Adding to the uncertainty is the potential tax windfall that legal marijuana represents for California’s economically stressed-out officials. The California Police Chiefs Association’s Mayer notes that “political considerations” may determine whether local prosecutors decide to push the pot button. In counties such as Mendocino, Humbolt and Alameda, marijuana is a lucrative cash crop, and Mayer doubts prosecutors there will aggressively force the issue. “And,” he adds, “if the DAs stop prosecuting, eventually the police will stop making arrests.”
Which is precisely the outcome Prop 19 advocates are hoping for. But it will be up to California voters to set it all in motion.
Julia Dahl is a New York-based freelance writer and contributing editor to The Crime Report.
Photo by Dustin Sacks via Flickr.
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The 100-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine finally ended last month, but anger over a law that ruined the lives of thousands of young African Americans lingers on. For many, the reform came too late.
Many Americans’ lives are destroyed by narcotics. But for Lawrence and Lamont Garrison, it was a controversial federal drug law that abruptly cut short their future.
The twin brothers were promising students at Howard University in Washington DC when, in October 1998, they joined the thousands of young black men who were condemned to long stretches in prison during the 1980s and 1990s for crack possession and/or alleged distribution. They had been sentenced under a 1986 law that established harshly different penalties for offenses involving crack cocaine and powdered cocaine.
Both claim they were unjustly imprisoned. According to Lawrence, who was released from prison last year after having his 15-year sentence reduced by three years, they were the victims of a plea deal arranged by the owner of a local body shop where they had taken their car for repairs. The shop owner succeeded in getting his own sentence for crack dealing reduced in exchange for fingering the brothers—falsely, they argue—as fellow members of a crack-selling ring. Even though there was no other evidence against them produced in court, the twins, both 25, were each convicted of multiple counts of dealing cocaine, including a charge of conspiracy to sell 500 grams of crack cocaine—enough to ensure that a 10-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence was the least amount of time they could serve. Lamont Garrison, who was sentenced to 19 years, will remain in federal prison until at least early next year.
Guilt or innocence aside, what is indisputable about the case is that it inflicted a draconian punishment on two young people who, but for the substance they were accused of selling, might have gotten a very different outcome. The twins were, at the time, ambitious work-study students at Howard. (Lawrence, who hoped to pursue a career in law, worked for the Department of Justice as part of the federal work-study program.) Had they only been charged with selling 500 grams of powdered cocaine, their sentences would have been reduced by at least half.
That so-called 100-to-one sentencing disparity, long at the heart of one of the bitterest and longest-running debates about inequities in the U.S. justice system, was finally addressed last month when President Barack Obama finally signed into law the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which has reduced the inequity in favor of a more measured approach to crack crime sentencing.
While the new act has returned some element of fairness to an issue that had been clouded by the rush to punishment fueled by the “law and order” anxieties of the 1980s, the injustice arguably continues.
While Lawrence is pleased that lawmakers have made the crack and powder sentences more equitable, he notes sadly that the sentence reduction is not retroactive, and has therefore left incarcerated many victims of the sentencing policies that unjustly trapped low-level users along with, he says, innocents like himself and his brother.
“It shows that there is still a line that [lawmakers] don't want to cross," Garrison told The Crime Report in a recent interview. "Why is crack different? (It’s) like separating water and ice. And you can ask, why?"
A lot of people are asking the same question.
The Politics of Fear
For nearly two decades, sentencing policies on crack owed more to the politics of fear than science.
"When crack cocaine first appeared on the scene, there was near-panic in the halls of Congress," Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin said at a July press conference introducing the new bill. "It scared us to death and we overreacted."
Although scientists have repeatedly declared there is no chemical difference between crack and powdered cocaine, the 1986 federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act enshrined starkly different penalties for possession and sale of the two versions of the drug. The immediate trigger had been the death that summer of University of Maryland star basketball player (and Boston Celtics draftee) Len Bias from a crack cocaine overdose. But it fed into existing perceptions that crack cocaine was uniquely responsible for a wave of violence on the streets of American cities. The drug was seen as devastatingly addictive and tightly linked to organized crime.
Under the 1986 law, possession of just five grams of crack was enough, for instance, to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence; but you would have to “possess with intent to distribute” 500 grams of powdered cocaine to net the same mandatory sentence. Similarly, if you were found guilty of selling 50 grams of crack, you faced a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence; while it would take being charged with selling 5,000 grams of powdered cocaine to net the same sentence.
Or so it was until August 3, when the President signed the new law, after countless hours of congressional testimony by criminal justice professionals (including police and prosecutors), advocates such as Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), and members of the United States Sentencing Commission, as well as accounts of cases like the Garrisons’—all of whom argued the 1986 approach was either ineffective or unjust, or both.
The new law hasn't eliminated the disparity altogether, and the failure to make the change in law retroactive means that thousands of people remain incarcerated under long sentences for what were, in many cases, drug offenses that would have been treated as minor if they had used a different version of the same drug. .
"This is a very compelling class of people," says Mary Price, general counsel for FAMM. "It’s like saying ‘we've learned lessons from you, but we're leaving you behind.’ We'll now have people sentenced to less time for more quantity."
The law was supposedly targeted at drug kingpins and traffickers. By establishing mandatory long sentences to "the traffickers who keep the street markets operating and the heads of drug trafficking organizations, responsible for delivering very large quantities of drugs," according to 2009 testimony to Congress by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, legislators believed they could tackle the root of the problem.
But by that measure the law was a failure, According to a 2007 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC), an arm of the federal judiciary, the majority of individuals (55.4 percent) sentenced in fiscal year 2005 for crack crimes were street-level dealers. Just 1.8 percent were "high-level suppliers."
Moreover, the USSC consistently found that the law disproportionately impacted minority populations, and especially blacks. Texas Federal Judge Ricardo Hinojosa, then the acting chair of the USSC, told Congress that in fiscal year 2008, more than 80 percent of defendants sentenced to do federal time on crack charges were African American.
The growing opposition to the law received a boost from law enforcement, which argued that the disparities complicated their efforts to fight the drug trade. The effects of the sentencing scheme,
John Timoney, then Miami police chief and president of the Police Executive Research Forum, told Congress in 2009, were no less than an "unmitigated disaster."
Competing Bills
Still, attempting to fix the problem only entangled the issue further. Competing bills filed over the last decade sought to address the disparity in different ways. Some lawmakers (including Barack Obama) preferred creating parity by raising possession limits of crack to equal those already codified for powdered cocaine crimes. Others sought to strike a different kind of balance.
The bill that finally became law this summer eliminated the 100-to-one disparity in favor of an 18-to-one disparity. Under the new law, it takes the sale of 28 grams of crack to net a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, while it still takes selling 500 grams of powdered cocaine to net the same.
That wasn't exactly what Sen. Durbin, the bill's primary author, wanted. He was in favor of true parity. But the compromise was a way to maintain bipartisan support for passage, he said in a July presss conference, by striking a balance that would win support of legislators, as well as prosecutors and narcotics officers, who opposed parity.
Chief among the skeptics is Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions. A co-author of the bill, Sessions concedes that Congress “did over-react” in passing the 1986 law, but he continues to argue that crack is different from powder cocaine and requires a different sentencing scheme.
"I think this is a serious drug problem that does tend to breed violence and addiction in very short order," he said during the same press conference.
Durbin responded that in the end compromise was the only way to change a policy that "wreaks...disrespect on the...process" of the criminal justice system. The bill, he said, wasn’t “perfect...but it marks significant progress."
Indeed, among the other major provisions of the law is the repeal of a five-year mandatory minimum for mere possession of crack. It was the first time in some three decades that Congress eliminated a mandatory minimum sentence.
‘Do the Right Thing’
But there is still work to be done, says FAMM's Price. Importantly, the law needs to be made retroactive. "We're asking Congress and the Sentencing Commission to do the right thing," she said.
During the July press conference, the assembled lawmakers appeared hesitant about pushing the retroactivity issue. Durbin and Sessions seemed inclined to see first if the USSC could right the problem when it incorporates the new law into the federal sentencing guidelines.
In passing the Fair Sentencing Act the Congress gave the USSC emergency power to make a temporary amendment to federal sentencing guidelines to bring them into line with the new 18-to-one sentencing scheme. The Commission could also vote to make the adjustment retroactive, which would give those already incarcerated a way to get back into court to have their sentences reconsidered.
While the USSC only has the power to authorize the reconsideration of sentences above and below the drug quantity levels that trigger a mandatory minimum sentence, the ability to provide already incarcerated individuals the chance to petition the court for a sentence reduction is considerable.
That’s the reason that Lawrence Garrison has now been out of prison for more than a year.
When the USSC last made a moderate crack-sentencing change retroactive in 2007, Lawrence applied. He was granted a 36-month reduction in his sentence, though he was previously not eligible for release until February 2012. Lamont was also given a considerable reduction, 46 months, and may come home as early as next year. Lamont was originally sentenced to 46 more months than his twin, says Lawrence, because Lamont chose to testify on his own behalf at the brothers' trial. When he was ultimately found guilty, the court tacked on the additional time for “obstruction of justice,” because he testified that he was innocent, Lawrence claimed.
After the USSC voted to make its sentencing adjustments retroactive in 2007 more than 24,000 people applied to have their sentences reduced. Nearly 66 percent succeeded in getting their sentences lowered, according to FAMM.
Nonetheless, it would still take an act of Congress to make the re-setting of the mandatory minimum triggers retroactive. That is something FAMM is pushing for; but whether that will happen remains to be seen.
"We've started talking to members [of Congress] about it," said Price. "My sense is that people think it's a heavy lift, but so was [changing] crack [sentencing]. So that's not a reason not to do it."
Since getting out of prison, Lawrence Garrison has hit the ground running. He's obtained his real estate license and is working with cars, buying at auctions for a wholesaler. Thoughts of a law career have long since been abandoned.
As he waits for his brother to come home, the anger still lingers. But his bitterness is mixed with relief that his long ordeal behind bars is finally over. "I know,” he says, “that any day that I wake up not in prison is a good day.”
Jordan Smith, a winner of this year's John Jay/Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Journalism, is an investigative reporter for the Austin Chronicle. Also this year, she was named winner of the Molly Ivins Give 'Em Hell Award given by the Texas Civil Rights Project.
Read full entry »The federal drug czar's office has awarded $22 million in new grants to 185 programs under the Drug Free Communities Support Program. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, also announced $63 million in continuation grants to 549 programs. The grants provide community coalitions support to prevent and reduce youth substance use.
The federal program provides grants of up to $625,000 over five years to community coalitions that facilitate citizen participation in local youth drug prevention efforts, including prescription drug diversion and prevention initiatives and underage drinking programs. The new grantees were selected from 521 applicants through a competitive process. For more information about the grant-winners: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/dfc/files/2010_new_awards.pdf
Read full entry »The Obama administration has delayed for weeks the release of a report that describes a “high and increasing” availability of methamphetamine mainly because of large-scale drug production in Mexico, reports the New York Times. The delayed release is an apparent effort to minimize diplomatic turbulence with the Mexican government. The report, the 2010 National Methamphetamine Threat Assessment by the National Drug Intelligence Center of the Justice Department, portrays drug cartels as easily able to circumvent the Mexican government’s restrictions on the importing of chemicals used to manufacture meth, which has reached its highest purity and lowest price in the United States since 2005.
Completed in mid-May, the report — which in previous years has been distributed to state and local police forces and posted online without fanfare or controversy — has not yet been released, partly because of the increasingly delicate politics of the United States-Mexico border and drugs. At one point, copies of the report were printed and boxes of it were shipped to San Diego to be distributed to law enforcement officials at a meth conference. But White House officials raised concerns because that same week President Felipe Calderón of Mexico was coming to Washington for a state visit. The release of the report has since been repeatedly delayed.
Read full entry »An Associated Press analysis of America's 40-year war on drugs concludes that the country's costly effort has met virtually none of its goals. In 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, he declared drug abuse "public enemy No. 1 in the United States" and promised to wage an "all-out offensive." His first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it's $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation.
The AP tracked where that money went and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent: $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries, including $6 billion in Colombia; $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs; $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs; $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, and $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone.
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The White House finally announced its long-awaited drug control strategy yesterday, after postponing the announcement several times. (Left: White House "drug czar" R. Gil Kerlikowske meets with President Obama.) The strategy calls, among other things, for allocating more federal resources to drug prevention and treatment, and alternatives to incarceration. Was it worth waiting for?
The Crime Report’s Contributing Editor Ted Gest, president of Criminal Justice Journalists, asked Peter Reuter, former director of the Rand Corporation’s Drug Policy Research Center and currently a professor with joint appointments to the School of Public Policy and the Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland, for his take.
The Crime Report: What’s your overall view of President Barack Obama’s new strategy?
Peter Reuter: It’s a change in the right direction. It is important to set a goal of decreasing drug use among 12 to 17-year-olds by 15 percent in five years. The strategy sets drug policy in a broader context than did strategies issued by the George W. Bush administration. For example, this document discusses the impact of drug abuse on HIV/AIDS. In some years of the Bush administration, the strategy didn’t mention HIV/AIDS at all.
TCR: Are the strategy’s specific goals on reducing drug use reasonable?
Reuter: The administration seeks to cut the number of chronic drug users by 15 percent. That’s an important statement. (It shows) they’re not focused just on youth drug abuse.
TCR: On the issue of penalties for drug abuse, the strategy supports measures like alternatives to incarceration by means of drug courts and prisoner re-entry programs. Is this enough?
Reuter: It’s significant that the administration calls it a national strategy and not just a federal one. But it should have dealt more with what states are doing on sentencing in drug cases: it’s a huge issue. The drug strategy doesn't propose to change a punitive sentencing regime, which is both unjust and expensive.
TCR: The White House says it is seeking a 3.7 percent increase in federal spending on drug treatment and a 13.4 percent increase for prevention of drug abuse .Hw meaningful is that?
Reuter: The discussion of federal budgets is a bit deceptive, but it mostly compares Obama’s second budget with his first. A better comparison would have been between the current budget proposal and 2009, the last year of the Bush administration. The growth in federal anti-drug spending over those two years is only 1.5 percent, way below inflation.
The Obama administration has trumpeted drug prevention, but the proportion of federal spending on treatment as a part of the overall anti-drug budget is actually below that in the last year of the Bush administration. Similarly on treatment: spending would actually increase from only 23 percent to 25 percent of total federal spending on drugs. It’s a modest change at best.
TCR: What about its discussion of stopping drugs from entering the United States? The administration proposes a 2.4 percent spending increase.
Reuter: I had thought there might be less proposed to be spent on interdiction, but that budget is untouched even though interdiction’s impact is quite questionable.
TCR: How about reducing drug production in countries of origin?
Reuter: In the international area, which is only 15 percent of total government antidrug spending, there is a proposed increase of 1 percent, but that is misleading. We would spend $100 million more in Afghanistan and reduce spending elsewhere. We have lots of reasons to be skeptical about the eradication effort in Afghanistan. It’s hard to make programs work in a country where are knowledge of local realities is very limited.
In general, the strategy is far too optimistic on international programs. We can push the drug trade around but we can’t reduce it substantially.
TCR: Is the strategy factually accurate?
Reuter: Some of the data used are questionable. The strategy says that cocaine prices have risen recently and purity has dropped, based on an analysis by the Drug Enforcement Administration that outside experts are not allowed to review. An analysis for the Office of National Drug Control Policy by the Institute for Defense Analyses, whose methodology is documented, found that the retail price of powder cocaine dropped from about $145 per gram to $125 between 2002 and 2007.
Photo Via Office of National Drug Control Policy
Read full entry »In a Q&A with CNBC, Harvard economics Professor Jeffrey A. Miron, whose research focuses on drug policy and the economics of crime, explains that his focus began with a question he considered during a sabbatical 20 years ago: Why do authorities treat marijuana differently than alcohol? Miron discovered a largely untapped mine of potential research, and he abandoned microeconomics to focus on drug issues. Now one of the foremost authorities in the field, he recently published the 2010 edition of "The Budgetary Implications of Drug Prohibition."
Miron said economists are trained to think about "unintended consequences." He explained, "So if you make it more difficult, if you make it impossible or very difficult to buy drugs legally, that doesn’t necessarily mean it stops it. It just means people will look for some way to do it illegally. And people want to supply it because there is a demand there...If you prohibit something for which there is a strong demand, particularly inelastic demand, you’re going to draw a lot of resources into that activity for the purpose of getting around the prohibition."
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Welcome to the Bay Area, where Grape Diesel is on sale and the police call pot shops “good neighbors.” Part Two of a Special Report.
The Harborside Health Center occupies one end of a low stucco building in a small office park overlooking Oakland’s Embarcadero Cove. Sailboats sway on slight waves on one side of the street, and on the other side, a steady stream of men and women (black, white, Hispanic; old and young; dapper and down-trodden) step up to the front entrance.
“Is this your first visit?” John, a burly twenty-something in shorts who checks ID at the front door, asks an African American woman in nursing scrubs. He’s wearing a baseball cap with the California bear and a pot leaf on it. The woman nods her head.
John hands her ID back with a smile. “Welcome back, ma’am.”
The woman climbs a short staircase and steps through a metal detector — where her ID is checked again, this time by a Filipino man in a Cheech & Chong T-shirt. Inside, Harborside feels like a yoga studio or new-age herbal medicine store. With big windows facing the harbor, the center is flooded with natural light; and the shop smells faintly of marijuana.
As it should. This is one of Oakland’s central dispensaries for medical marijuana, legal since 1996, in the state of California. Although Los Angeles has more dispensaries than the Bay Area, the city of Oakland last July became the first place in the U.S. to levy a tax on the drug: for every $1,000 of marijuana sold here and at the three other dispensaries in the city, $18 goes to the city. I visited what marijuana activists wryly call “Oaksterdam” as part of The Crime Report’s two-part investigation into the status of the nationwide movement for legalization of the drug.
Kronic Krispies
At Harborside, patients check in at the front counter, then step into a long, open room with five glass cases that display dozens of varieties of marijuana buds, as well as tinctures, pot-infused honey and oils, and other “edibles,” including “Kronic Krispies” and ginger snaps by a company called Butter Brothers. Across from the display cases is a corner with nearly a hundred small potted pot plants. A very pregnant woman works behind the counter, dispensing growing advice along with the clones.
My tour guide, a young woman named Dani Geen, tells me that all 80 employees are “patients.” That’s mainly defined by the fact that they have a physician’s recommendation for medical marijuana which in California you can obtain from a doctor for dozens of ailments from anxiety to migraines to sinusitis.
Many patients use that recommendation to get a medical marijuana ID card, which is issued by both the state and individual counties and looks a little like a drivers license: typically it displays the patient’s name, address and photograph, an expiration date and a seal to make it more difficult to counterfeit. According to Stephen DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside, some patients choose not to get the card because it can cost up to $150, which is why most dispensaries also accept a copy of a doctor’s recommendation (which they then verify with the prescribing physician).
Dani tells me she got her medical marijuana card four years ago to obtain relief from fibromyalgia. She rarely uses the word marijuana; instead, it’s “medicine.” And patients don’t smoke or get high, they “medicate.”
Harborside sees 600 to 800 patients a day, of whom as many as 80 are new ones. According to DeAngelo, the dispensary last year grossed $20 million, $2 million of which went back to the government in sales taxes. The clinic is open seven days a week, between 11am and 8pm. A sister store recently opened 40 miles south in San Jose.
I remark on how airy and inviting the place feels, and Dani smiles, flashing a silver tongue stud: “We’re definitely out of the shadows.”
In addition to pot, Harborside offers Reiki, massage, substance abuse counseling and acupuncture. But politics is not forgotten: there’s a computer terminal in the waiting area which patients are encouraged to use to write letters to their political representatives supporting medical marijuana, as well as correspond with the movement’s “prisoners of war” – those behind bars for marijuana offenses. One hour of such volunteer time earns a free gram of medicine.
DeAngelo says the employees, most of whom are full-time, start at $14 an hour; they also receive health insurance, a 401K plan, and a free gram of medicine for each shift they work. To work at Harborside, you have to be a patient.
After showing me the small library, where books about how to roll a joint, the history of the marijuana movement, and cannabis horticulture can be checked out by patients, Dani takes me to a counter manned by Seth Rogers, a young man with shaggy brown hair, who sports a hemp necklace and tortoise shell eyeglasses.
Seth walks me though the wares in the display case, where each “strain,” which is how the dispensary refers to the different varieties, is carefully marked with prices, item numbers and bar codes. Harborside sells marijuana by the gram and the ounce. Prices vary, but typically an eighth of an ounce costs between $45 and $55, with some as low as $20. On the day I visited, there was a sale on Grape Diesel.
Patients are limited to buying two ounces per week. According to DeAngelo, Harborside sells about eight pounds of medical marijuana each day, and keeps about a week’s worth in storage. Security is tight: to get to the back room, you need to pass through a fingerprint identification system.
Oakland’s dispensaries consider themselves upstanding members of their city’s business community. The pathbreaking municipal decision to levy taxes on medical marijuana sales was the result of lobbying by DeAngelo and other dispensary directors. “We saw that the city was struggling, and looking at closing institutions we care about, like the Children’s Hospital,” says DeAngelo. “We thought we could assist.”
Checking for Quality
According to DeAngelo, Harborside gets its marijuana from between 300 and 400 “vendors,” all of whom are patients, which allows them to grow a certain amount of the weed legally. Typically, these vendors bring about one pound per month each to Harborside.
In Oakland, according to the non-profit marijuana advocacy group NORML, the law permits patients to grow 20 plants outdoors and 72 inside. But in late January the California Supreme Court affirmed a district court ruling that such limits were an unconstitutional amendment of the 1996 Compassionate Use Act, so private marijuana growing may soon expand.
DeAngelo concedes that the system is imperfect. Vendors with grow rooms have had house fires and been the victims of armed robbery. But he argues that it is necessary, because federal law levies stiff mandatory minimum sentences on people who are found growing more than 100 plants. Currently, DeAngelo is working with the city of Oakland to develop a larger scale grow operation which Harborside can run on its own.
After the marijuana is brought to Harborside, a sample of it is sent to the Steep Hill Medical Collective, a lab based in Oakland that tests for mold and other imperfections. DeAngelo tells me that the collective is currently trying to develop marijuana strains with more anti-cancer properties, in response to requests from many of their gravely ill patients.
I ask Dani what her parents think of her working with pot for a living. “My dad just left (the center),” she says, laughing. “He’s a patient, too. And my mom smoked while she was pregnant with me. So they’re cool with it.”
Smoking (excuse me, medicating) and cell phone use are not permitted inside Harborside, and Dani scolds me a bit when mine rings. DeAngelo tells me that, while they are not allowed to medicate in the clinic, employees can come to work medicated. If their state hinders their job performance—which DeAngelo says is rare—they’ll be pulled aside and asked to adjust their dose.
After the tour, I sit outside on one of the benches in the parking lot for a few minutes and watch the steady flow of patients exiting—each with their medicine inside a plain white paper bag. One man makes the mistake of placing a joint between his lips and flicking his lighter as he steps outside.
“I’m sorry, sir,” says John, the ID checker. ”There’s no smoking right here.”
He directs the patient across the parking lot to a wooded median where another patient is sitting on a bench, enjoying the sunny day with his skinny cigarette. There isn’t a uniformed cop in sight. But even if there were, it’s unlikely he or she would make much fuss. In theory at least, if a patient with pot can is also in possession of a valid medical marijuana ID or doctor’s recommendation, he or she shouldn't be subject to arrest.
I ask John about other medical marijuana dispensaries in the Bay Area. Are they all this…nice? He says that Harborside is high end, and tells me to check out a smaller place in San Francisco called HopeNet.
The 420 Room
HopeNet is a small dispensary located in a railroad-style floor-through on a low-rent block in the city’s SOMA district. Steel bars cover the display window and front door. A light-skinned man of indeterminate race greets patients and checks for medical marijuana ID.
I have no such ID, and unlike at Harborside, had no appointment. So the man (who I soon learn is called Silver) is skeptical when I say I’m a reporter and would like to look around. He pulls up a stool and tells me to wait a minute near the front desk in a small room that, like the rest of the place, is swirling with marijuana smoke.
After a few minutes, a middle-aged woman, followed by a German Shepherd, comes out to greet me. The woman is owner Cathy Smith, a former Bangor, Maine policewoman- turned-cannabis activist whom the patrons refer to as “mom.” The dog, Sugar, is part of the security team.
Like Dani and Seth, Cathy refers to pot as “medicine” and her clients as “patients.” But unlike the earnest young people at Harborside, Cathy has a healthy sense of humor about the new lingo.
“We’ve had to re-educate ourselves,” says Cathy. “We’re our own spin doctors.”
Cathy leads me into what she calls “the 420 Room,” where patients are encouraged to medicate. With a giant bud leaf tapestry on one wall and two low couches and a coffee table opposite, the room feels like the basement of that kid in high school whose parents didn’t have rules. Just off the 420 room is a tiny atrium with (non-medical) plants, a bench and an open sky light so patients can smoke “outside.”
On one of the couches, a man with deep brown circles beneath his eyes holds a two-foot glass bong on his lap. As Cathy tells me about the events they sponsor through HopeNet—Bingo, movie night, open mike, homeless outreach—the man listens, and chimes in.
“I want you to know,” he says slowly, “that this woman here is probably the kindest person to veterans in the whole city.” The man pulls a long suck of smoke from his bong. Next to him, a younger woman smokes a blunt and watches us silently.
Cathy smiles at the compliment. Others apparently agree. On the wall of the back room where the medication is sold is an award from the National Association of Professional Women, honoring Cathy for her work in the community. Among the civic contributions the association had in mind may be HopeNet’s policy of providing free marijuana to about 100 patients in hospice care nearby, including some veterans.
The plastic bins of buds in the back room are neatly marked. As Cathy shows me the microscope used to check for mold, an employee and patient light up. “Whoa, that’s some real Sour Diesel,” says the patient, sounding just like stoner-icon Jeff Spicoli, of the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” “That’s better than the Sour Diesel at some other clubs.”
I ask Cathy if there are drawbacks to smoking on the job and she shrugs. “Most everyone here is stoned and everyone is working,” she says. And indeed, the employees, while somewhat glassy eyed, are alert, friendly, and seem to be engaged in their tasks. “I was high when I was working in Maine,” she continues, prompting one male employee to pipe up: “It’s better than being all pilled out.”
That was Cathy’s motivation as well. She obtained her medical marijuana card 11 years ago to relieve the chronic pain suffered as a result of a major car accident when she was a teenager (she’s now 54). “I used to be addicted to Percodan,” she says. “I tried everything, but finally found that marijuana worked best. I know it sounds hokey, but getting my medical prescription was life-changing.”
Though San Francisco technically allows some dispensaries to remain open 24 hours a day, Cathy closes up shop at 7 pm. “I don’t want my clients wandering the street here at night,” she says, adding with no apparent irony, “In this neighborhood, there’s a lot of drug use.”
Policing Pot
After visiting both dispensaries, I call the San Francisco Police Department and speak with Public Information Officer Boaz Mariles.
“The police culture has changed in terms of understanding that [for some people] it’s not just weed, it’s medicine,” explains Mariles. “The public has spoken and it’s our job to work with the marijuana dispensary clubs to keep them and the community safe.”
Mariles says there has been no spike in thefts or violent crime—or even in DUI arrests—in the areas surrounding the city’s 26 dispensaries: “It’s just the opposite,” he says. “People are taking ownership. Now they’re stakeholders in the community. If we do our job right and they do theirs, crime should go down.”
He adds that dispensary owners and employees have “done their part” by keeping the sidewalks outside their businesses clean, discouraging loitering, and generally acting as friendly neighbors.
That sounds familiar. Rick Holman, Chief of Police in the ski resort of Breckenridge, Colorado, where locals passed a bill last year legalizing pot for adults, told me during a telephone interview that he had seen “very little negative impact” from the law.
“We haven’t seen an increase in criminal activity around dispensaries and haven’t seen a real impact from decriminalization.” Holman went on: “We don’t see people walking around in a stupor.”
But Holman is still a cop. During our conversation, he admitted that he was having a hard time accepting the notion of legalized marijuana. “(But) whether I agree or not, the will of the people of Breckenridge is that private possession is not a municipal crime,” he said.
Still, having been in law enforcement for more than 30 years, he says he “doesn’t associate” with people who smoke pot—as far as he knows.
Back in California, voters are now being asked to take an even more dramatic step than tiny Breckenridge by approving The Regulate Control and Tax Cannabis Act, an upcoming referendum that would legalize and tax the drug. Even if it wins passage, Holman’s unease illustrates how difficult it may be to duplicate California’s laissez-faire attitude about marijuana in the rest of the country.
HopeNet’s Cathy Smith says she thinks the movement will have a tough slog nationally. Indeed, in Washington State, a man was killed last week when he tried to protect his pot plants from theft, and a marijuana activist who grows pot at home is under arrest for shooting intruders. And in Canada, often considered more socially progressive than the U.S., the prime minister recently shot down hopes of legalizing the drug.
“I see this as a civil rights fight,” Smith says, comparing the marijuana movement to the gay marriage movement. “But just like Proposition 8, I worry that at the last minute the conservative forces will come out and crush [the cannabis act].”
Harborside’s DeAngelo believes that the key to keeping the movement growing is to make sure that regulation, including “reasonable” caps on the number of dispensaries and a rigorous screening process for owners, is built into new laws. He observes there is a vast difference between Oakland’s four tightly regulated dispensaries, and the sea of cannabis outlets on “virtually every corner” in Los Angeles.
“There are all sorts of nefarious characters running those places,” says DeAngelo. “Hopefully, the rest of the country can learn from Oakland’s example.”
Both Smith and DeAngelo think that, eventually, medical marijuana will be legal and accessible nationwide. Smith estimates that within ten years, two-thirds of the states will have passed laws allowing medical marijuana, which she hopes will spur the federal government to action.
“Sometimes the government lags behind what the people want,” she says. “But they’ll come around—it’s a domino effect.”
If she’s right, that will mean an historic transformation of the country’s attitude towards marijuana—and perhaps of some of the underlying concepts of the long (and ineffective) war on drugs.
Julia Dahl is contributing editor of The Crime Report
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Will Marijuana Ever Be Legal in the U.S.? Part One of a Two-Part Special Report.
Last fall I interviewed George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor Paul Butler about his 2009 book, Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice. In the book, Butler muses on the unplanned consequences of the drug war, such as ensnaring large numbers of young men of color into the justice system following their arrest for marijuana possession.
I asked him whether he thought marijuana would be legal in his lifetime, and his response surprised me: “I think it’ll be legal in 10 years,” he said.
That got me thinking: what is the outlook for the marijuana movement? In the past 18 months, Colorado, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts have all passed significant marijuana reforms, either decriminalizing small quantities of the drug for personal use, or expanding access to medical marijuana.
In January, I set two Google alerts: one for “medical marijuana” one for “marijuana decriminalization.” The stories rolled in—at least a dozen a day over the next two months—and they demonstrated how far the movement has already come. Some highlights: on February 23, the Washington D.C. city council met to discuss a decriminalization measure, and not a single person testified against the proposal; in late February, the Iowa Board of Pharmacy recommended that the state legalize medical marijuana, prompting the state’s legislature to set up a committee to study the issue; and in early March, in two suits filed against the state of California, two dispensary owners in Los Angeles claimed their constitutional rights had been violated when the city capped the number of medical marijuana dispensaries at 70.
But one story overshadowed everything else. In November, Californians will vote on a groundbreaking measure* which would establish a tax and regulatory system for the drug. Could this initiative pass? A Field poll last year showed that 56 percent of state voters supported legalization. That by no means makes it a sure bet, but the initiative's Facebook page currently has more than 36,000 online fans.
And if the measure does pass, it could galvanize the national movement for reform. Polls last year from Gallup and ABC News already indicate that nearly three-quarters of Americans think medical marijuana should be legal, and that the number of people who approve decriminalization of the drug is inching toward 50 percent.
But marijuana reformers are not ready to celebrate yet.
Trouble Ahead?
Indeed, there are signs that point to choppy waters ahead. In California, the attention to the regulation initiative coincides with growing concern about the boom in the cannabis dispensary business in Los Angeles. In a state where activists have paved the way in transforming marijuana from its association with a seedy subculture on the margins of society into a source of comfort for the desperately ill, opposition to strict regulation and control of dispensaries (as evidenced by the Los Angeles suits mentioned above) has pitted former allies against each other.
And continued hostility from law enforcement could sabotage even the most modest reform measures. Since 1977, possession of 25 grams or under of marijuana has been a violation, like a traffic infraction, in New York State, punishable with a $100 fine. But since at least 1996, New York City police may have been using even these liberalized statutes to harass young people. The charge comes in a 2008 Queens College (CUNY) study, which claims that police have been "tricking and intimidating" youths stopped in the street to inadvertently display their pot by asking them to empty their pockets—and then charging them with a misdemeanor under a part of the law that prohibits marijuana "burning or open to public view." Such tactics, which Queens College Professor Harry Levine, the study's author, wrote reflected a police "crusade" against young people of color in particular, contributed to the surprisingly high number of marijuana possession arrests recorded in the city—nearly 40,000 in 2007 alone, up from just 3,200 in 1987, according to the study. The Crime Report contacted the NYPD for comment, but the department did not respond to the query.
According to the most recent FBI's Uniform Crime Report, 44 percent of all 1.7 million drug arrests in 2007 were for marijuana possession.
Such cases demonstrate that translating liberal public opinion into more lenient marijuana policies won’t be easy. Decriminalization, says Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, and one of the country’s foremost advocates for an end to the drug war, is “not inevitable – it’s not going to happen on its own.”
Pro-marijuana activists aren’t likely to get much help from the White House, even though President Barack Obama is the first commander-in-chief to unambiguously admit to using marijuana for recreational purposes. The messages from Washington so far have been mixed.
Last October, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would no longer raid or harass dispensaries, growers and users who are otherwise complying with state law. Many marijuana advocates interpreted Holder’s decision as a sign that the federal government was bending their way, and expected that the White House would follow up, for example, by asking the Food and Drug Administration to provide a definitive judgment on the health benefits of marijuana—a position supported by no less an establishment group than the American Medical Association.
Nevertheless, a few days after Holder’s announcement, Obama’s new drug policy czar, former Seattle police chief R. Gil Kerlikowske, undermined any hope of major federal marijuana reform when he issued a statement calling medical marijuana legalization a “non-starter” that “isn’t even on the agenda” for the Administration.
The statement extinguished any lingering doubts about what federal drug bureaucrats thought about the claims of medical benefits, by pointedly placing quotes around “medical” marijuana wherever it used the phrase. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that in 2009, Obama’s first year in office, Drug Enforcement Administration agents seized nearly twice as much marijuana as they did in 2008.
From Reefer Madness to Referendums
And that shouldn’t really surprise anyone who has studied the history of the issue. Marijuana has been illegal in the United States since 1937. Attitudes to the drug were then largely framed by the 1936 film “Reefer Madness,” which depicted high school students driven to manslaughter, suicide and rape by their addiction to marijuana.
The counter-culture movement of the 1960s helped to dispel some of the most outlandish myths about cannabis, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that political momentum to decriminalize marijuana picked up traction. In 1973, Oregon made possession of one ounce or under punishable by a $500-$1,000 fine and effectively became the first state to decriminalize the drug.
By 1979, 11 states had passed similar laws. The issue briefly appeared in presidential politics when President Jimmy Carter endorsed decriminalization in 1977—only to do nothing about it while in office. Still, the late 1970s saw some strides in the movement to allow marijuana for medicinal use. In 1976, after a series of lawsuits, the federal government agreed to provide marijuana (which the government has been growing on a farm at the University of Mississippi since 1968) to a small group of patients suffering tumors, glaucoma and other painful ailments. But the movement went into deep freeze during the Reagan Era, and the so-called Compassionate User Program was officially closed to new patients in 1991.
A decade later, the AIDS epidemic created the opening for the next wave of marijuana activism. In 1996, efforts by AIDS activists in San Francisco to legalize medical marijuana gathered support from wealthy progressives like George Soros, Men’s Warehouse founder George Zimmer and University of Phoenix benefactor John Sperling. Following a campaign steered by Nadelmann’s Drug Policy Alliance, Proposition 215, otherwise known as the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, passed in California with 56 percent of the vote.
“That,” boasts Nadelmann, “was when we realized we could play ball in the big leagues of American politics.”
After the California victory, Washington, Nevada, Oregon and Maine passed bills legalizing medical marijuana. However, the bills, which had been prompted by the passage of statewide referendums or initiatives, left patients, doctors and dispensaries vulnerable to federal authorities—since marijuana continued to remain a Schedule I narcotic under the 1970 federal Controlled Substances Act.
Smoke Signals
Marijuana still makes politicians nervous. And especially at a time when the political scene is increasingly polarized, federal lawmakers seem loath to challenge prevailing popular opinions about its use and dangers—even though support for drug decriminalization in general (and for ending the so-called “war on drugs”) comes from both the left and right.
All the same, according to NORML, a non-profit group that advocates for marijuana legalization, more than a dozen states have bills on medical marijuana pending—and the odds are that at least some of them will join the roster of 14 states that have already legalized medical marijuana. Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a research group advocating reform of the criminal justice system, argues that increasing support from state legislators is a sign that the ground is shifting. For evidence, he points to the fact that, these days, pro-marijuana lawmakers are often the butt of “stoner” jokes. “Nobody jokes about abortion, or gun control,” says Sterling.
In New Jersey, Democratic State Assemblyman Reed Gusciora’s bill legalizing medical marijuana had been stalled for several years before finally passing in January. Gusciora says the bill, which allows use of the drug for only a small number of ailments and does not permit patients to grow their own pot, gained support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle after dramatic testimony from patients, especially those suffering from cancer.
“There was an educational curve for some of my colleagues,” says Gusciora. “But as more and more learned about the benefits of the drug, they saw that it was the way to go.”
Though support for legalizing medical marijuana does not necessarily translate to support for decriminalizing the drug for adult recreational use, several advocates told The Crime Report that the conversation surrounding the weed’s medicinal uses has allowed legislators and the public at large to talk about marijuana in a serious way, which they see as having a positive effect on future efforts to loosen restrictions.
Marijuana reform advocates also point to a key demographic factor which they say could turn things around: the increasing political influence of baby boomers who grew up in an era when casual use of marijuana was part of the cultural climate. Nadelmann argues this has led to “increasing realism” on the subject of marijuana by baby boomer parents.
“My bottom line as your parent who loves you to death is not ‘did you or didn’t you [smoke pot at a party]?’ says Nadelmann, who has a 21-year-old daughter and admits to being an “occasional” marijuana smoker. “It’s ‘did you come home safely at the end of the night and are you going to grow up and make me healthy grandkids?’ ”
The change is evident in popular culture, particularly in TV and movies. Even though the use of a tobacco cigarette in a film can draw huge protests, there seems to be a bit more tolerance for cannabis. Mainstream sitcoms and dramas are increasingly addressing medical and recreational use of marijuana. HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “The Simpsons,” and “Family Guy” have all screened medical marijuana episodes. Meryl Streep and Steve Martin got high in last year’s romantic comedy, “It’s Complicated” (Tellingly, the movie reportedly received an R rating because their pot smoking did not have any negative consequences). And then, of course, there is Showtime’s Emmy-winning “Weeds,” an entire series devoted to the adventures of a pot-dealing suburban mom.
Ironically, as cultural forces seem to be moving toward a loosening of marijuana laws, advocates seem to be becoming more comfortable talking about the dangers of the drug. The movement, says Alison Holcomb, an attorney with Washington State’s ACLU, has historically avoided “open and honest discussion” about the health and dependency risks associated with recreational use of marijuana, especially for young people.
“We’ve responded to the fact that the opposition has inundated the public with misinformation” about the drug, she explains. “We’ve tried to hold down the pendulum by saying the risks are overstated, but we need to help parents navigate the real risks of drug abuse. If we continue to ignore those risks, we’re not being any more honest than the opposition.”
Another factor, oddly enough, touches directly on the fears of violence associated with the drug trade. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Mexican drug gangs received nearly 60 percent of their profits from marijuana sales in the U.S. Even in conservative regions of the country, decriminalization is perceived as a means of combating organized crime. Last month, El Paso, Texas City Council Member Beto O’Rourke received support for his legalization views from over half the participants in an online chat with voters.
And finally, there’s the issue of money. At a time when even “tough-on-crime” lawmakers in many states are contemplating measures like releasing inmates in order to fix gaping budgets, questions about the value of spending millions of dollars to enforce marijuana prohibitions have come to the fore.
On the federal level, however, it remains a tough slog. In an e-mailed statement to The Crime Report, the House Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, Lamar Smith (R-Texas), made that crystal clear. “Federal drug laws clearly prohibit the distribution of marijuana for any purpose, including state approved medical use,” Smith said. “By directing law enforcement officers to ignore federal drug laws, which were enacted by Congress to protect the American people, the Administration is promoting the use of marijuana.”
Smith concluded with this blunt message: “Federal law enforcement officials have a responsibility to enforce the laws passed by Congress, including those that prohibit the distribution of marijuana.”
Many law enforcement authorities are, not surprisingly, uncomfortable at being caught between federal and state priorities in the drug war. I asked Steven Demofonte of New Jersey’s Fraternal Order of Police what his members thought of his state’s new medical marijuana law, which legalizes the drug for certain patients, such as those suffering from cancer and multiple sclerosis. His emailed response was that the measure was “disappointing” to FOP members.
“When problems related to the law arise — and they will — we in law enforcement will be the ones to shoulder the burden,” he added. “Any state considering legalizing marijuana should look very closely at what has happened in California.”
But what has happened in California? Last month, I made a trip to San Francisco to see for myself.
THURSDAY: Oaksterdam: California’s Experiment with Legal Marijuana.
Julia Dahl is a contributing editor at The Crime Report.
Photo by Fulvio Minichini via Flickr.
* The first version of this story incorrectly referred to the upcoming California initiative as AB 390. AB 390 was an earlier version of AB 2254, a legislative bill that would legalize cannabis sponsored by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano. The initiative that will be voted on in November has yet to be given a number. The Crime Report thanks reader Doug McVay for spotting our error.
Read full entry »The St. Paul Pioneer Press offers a thumbnail profile of Michele Leonhart, a St. Paul native who is President Obama’s pick to be the nation’s No. 1 drug cop as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Leonhart, a 1978 graduate in criminal justice at Bemidji State University, worked in Minneapolis as a DEA agent in the early 1980s.
Jim Braseth, a legendary DEA chief in the Twin Cities, once said, “If you could look in the dictionary for the definition of a federal drug agent, you’d find Michele’s picture.” She was elevated to the No. 2 spot in the DEA in 2003 under President George W. Bush. Since the 2007 resignation of former DEA head Karen Tandy, Leonhart has been serving as acting administrator. If confirmed by the Senate, her appointment would cap a 30-year DEA career that included stints in Los Angeles, St. Louis, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington.
Read full entry »Local law enforcement officers are flummoxed by "murky, confusing and vague" rules governing medical-marijuana production and are looking to the state legislature for clarification, reports the Denver Post. Last week, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that dispensaries must provide more care for patients than merely distributing medical marijuana. And this week, the state Board of Health removed from its regulations the meaning of the "significant relationships" that define what makes a caregiver, saying it feared a conflict with the court.
Law enforcement agencies don't know whether the actions lift the lid off the legal role of dispensaries or clamp it down tighter. "The Board of Health decision, for me, only causes more confusion," said Denver police Lt. Matt Murray. "If we go on a raid and find marijuana, what do we do? If the user is licensed, what about the caregiver?" Advocates for medical marijuana seemed just as confused over the stricken definition. They argued that an industry has sprouted based on the prior definition and that legitimate providers are now unsure of their legal protection.
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