ACTIVISTS BACK MARIJUANA REPEAL

Saturday, March 25, 2000 -- (AMHERST) - Aaron Wilson recalls the way
drugs affected many of his friends' lives while they were students at
the University of Massachusetts in the early 1990s. Some of them had
to drop out of school because of marijuana arrests, he said, or they
had to spend a lot of money on lawyers. Some even went to jail.

Now Wilson, a 28-year-old free-lance public relations consultant who
lives in Belchertown, says it's time to stop treating marijuana users
like criminals.

"The war on drugs is an obvious failure," he said. "It's not achieving
its goals and it's causing a great deal of harm."

Wilson, president of the Pioneer Valley chapter of the National
Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, is among a group of
activists who have spearheaded a drive to bring the question of
decriminalizing marijuana before voters in Tuesday's town election.

Amherst is a good place to challenge marijuana laws, he said, because
of the town's younger, educated population and history of taking
positions that are out of the mainstream on controversial issues.

"People here have a social conscience," Wilson said. "They've taken
the lead in terms of pointing out what's right and what's wrong."

The question is stirring debate, in town and out. On Friday, two
anti-drug activists from the eastern Massachusetts visited Town
Manager Barry Del Castilho and the police department to voice concerns.

The first part of the referendum question would urge town officials to
ask state and federal representatives "to repeal the prohibition of
marijuana." Town Meeting approved an article in 1976 that instructed
legislators to repeal laws banning marijuana possession, along with
those banning cohabitation and private sexual conduct between
consenting adults. The vote was 99-84. Wilson said that many people
have forgotten about that vote and it needs to "get dusted off and
reaffirmed."

The second part of the referendum would "urge the Amherst Police
Department to deprioritize the enforcement of laws covering the
possession of marijuana against persons over the age of 18." This is
the first time such an attempt has been made in Massachusetts, Wilson
said, and if it's successful, it could be repeated in places like
Cambridge or Northampton.

"We want to document the dissatisfaction of residents of Amherst with
the drug war and put some teeth into it," he said. "If you want
change, you have to demonstrate political power."

Nonbinding Vote

If the referendum passes, Amherst Police Chief Charles Scherpa would
not be obliged to change the town's policies, because it is
nonbinding. And he doesn't plan to.

"Nothing will change," Scherpa said. "We will enforce the laws as we
always have. There's no way we can pick and choose which laws we're
going to enforce."

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the NORML Foundation in
Washington, D.C., said Scherpa's statement should not be taken to mean
that passage would be meaningless.

"When people speak in a loud, uniform voice, it's rather hard for
public officials not to heed those wants of the public," St. Pierre
said. "If it's disregarded, you're committing the cardinal sin of
local politics."

St. Pierre, who attended Amherst Regional High School and graduated
from the University of Massachusetts in 1989, said many university
towns, including Ann Arbor, Mich., Madison, Wis., and Berkeley,
Calif., have decided to decriminalize possession of marijuana. He said
people between 18 and 30 are the most likely segment of the population
to believe that marijuana possession is "well within the realm of
personal choices a responsible adult has in this country."

He said Amherst's referendum is part of a 30-year effort to change the
nation's marijuana laws. Eleven states have decriminalized marijuana
possession to some extent, he said, such as issuing fines rather than
making arrests.

The referendum has received support from Select Board candidate Anne
Awad, and a range of people have written letters to the Amherst
Bulletin supporting decriminalization, from 92-year-old retired
professor Ellsworth Barnard to inmates at the Hampshire County Jail.

Select Board member Hill Boss, who hopes to fend off a challenge from
Awad in Tuesday's election, is opposing the measure.

Wilson, citing figures from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, said that
nationally, there were 604,824 arrests for marijuana possession in
1997.

Police records show there were only 19 arrests in Amherst last year
charging people with possession of a class D substance, which usually
refers to marijuana. In fiscal 1998 there were 47 arrests.

Richard Evans, a Northampton attorney who is on the NORML board, said
the Amherst referendum seeks to address the harm that has arisen from
the failure of marijuana laws.

"I don't know anyone who believes that arresting people for simple
possession of marijuana is less harmful for them than marijuana
itself," he said. "Most people recognize that the worst thing about
marijuana is that it can get you arrested."

Jason Burk, a UMass junior who is vice president of the Cannabis
Reform Coalition on campus, said police should concentrate their
energies on more dangerous behavior, such as drunken driving.

"When students get busted for possession, it can wreck their lives,"
he said. "These are leaves from a plant that comes from nature. God
put it here."

Residents Debate Issue

Supporters of the referendum said that criminal records from marijuana
arrests can damage a person's future employment prospects. As of this
year, they said, arrests can jeopardize students' financial aid as
well.

Kenneth Burnham, the director of financial aid at UMass, said that
this year for the first time there's a question on aid applications
about past convictions for drug offenses. But he said that a
drug-related conviction does not necessarily make a student ineligible
for aid, and many applicants are leaving the question blank.

"Less than 1 percent of students are expected to lose their aid
eligibility," he said.

Select Board member Carl Seppala said he supports liberalization of
the laws but not the referendum as written.

"It goes further than I feel comfortable with," Seppala said. "We
can't put the police force in jeopardy if they are blatantly not
enforcing the law. We're not that aggressive about it in the first
place."

Terry Franklin of Amherst, a supporter of the referendum, compared the
issue to the decision by many police forces not to enforce existing
laws against homosexual behavior. He said that in the 1920s, alcohol
was legalized in New York even though it was still illegal at the
federal level.

David Lenson, a UMass professor whose 1995 book "On Drugs" criticized
the government's anti-drug campaign, said that nothing in the
referendum would go against federal or state law.

"The taxpayers of Amherst are those who employ the police department,
and the citizens ought to have some say about their conduct," he said.

Evans said the referendum allows voters to express their opinion on
what crimes the police should emphasize. "That's the essence of
democracy, is it not?" he said.

Stanley Ziomek, a member of a community partnership on substance
abuse, said he's among those opposed to the referendum.

"I'm old school," he said. "We have enough problems without legalizing
the damn stuff."