Rabbi Gets Probation for Medical Marijuana

A TIME FOR MERCY

Rabbi Yitzchak Fried, the longtime Lower East Side activist who was
arrested last year for selling marijuana he said was for medical
purposes, was given five years' probation and a $5000 fine at a hearing
Monday in Brooklyn State Supreme Court. Nearly two dozen supporters of
Rabbi Fried sat in the courtroom under a broken clock as he spoke,
minutes before Judge Plummer E. Lott delivered the sentence.

"I am remorseful," said Fried, who pleaded guilty earlier this year and
was facing up to three years in prison. "I feel I won't do it again,
though I will fight for the principles within the law that I believe in.
My family has been very devastated by this situation."

Judge Lott received more than 20 letters from Fried's friends, family
members, and colleagues describing his selflessness, and from sick
people Fried has helped in the past. Describing himself as "firm but
fair," the judge said the nonviolent crime has already tarnished the
rabbi's reputation and made his family suffer, and that sending Fried to
jail would only throw his wife and seven children onto public
assistance.

Fried was arrested in February 2000 in Borough Park, Brooklyn, after
selling pot totaling about seven ounces to a police informant on five
occasions. Fried, who became involved with medical marijuana after
counseling AIDS patients in harm-reduction programs in the early 1990s,
said the man told him he had AIDS and was addicted to heroin. Fried
believes marijuana is an exit drug that helps people get off junk.

While stressing the gravity of the case, Lott said, "In my review of the
material, the picture that emerges is that you are inherently decent,
compassionate, respectable, and loved by those who you are in contact
with."

In the hallway, surrounded by well-wishers patting him on the back,
Fried said he was thankful for the turnout. "The law needs to be
clarified, but it's not for me to do it, not for politicians to change
the law," he said. "It's having people come forth, having the average
citizen speak the truth."

Or the numbers could speak for themselves. Since Giuliani took office,
the city has opened a zealous and costly front on marijuana, medical and
recreational. In the first half of 2000 alone, police made 36,938
arrests on charges involving marijuana. Startlingly, all but 671 of
those were for misdemeanors, selling less than an ounce or possessing
anything from a joint to eight ounces. This is a 1375 percent increase
over 1993, and has resulted in a spike in lockups for misdemeanor
possession charges, from 139 that year to 4867 in 1999.

The boom in street-corner arrests stands in stark contrast to the scene
in suburbs like Nassau County, where smokers sit safely in private homes
or in cars in school parking lots. In 1997, reports the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, only 1177 arrests were
made in Nassau for pot, 1302 in Westchester.

The city is a different world. Police are arresting people at a frantic
rate for nothing but low-level marijuana charges. A recent analysis by
the city's Independent Budget Office shows that a decade ago a
misdemeanor marijuana arrest was four times more likely to be
accompanied by a serious charge than it is today.

And in the name of change, under the bill Governor George Pataki has
proposed to reform the Rockefeller drug laws, things could get even
worse. While Pataki's plan lowers the most severe mandatory minimums for
top-level offenders, it quietly ratchets up the danger for those caught
with marijuana. Under the proposal, which would hit recreational and
medical smokers alike, holding a joint in a park could become a felony.

Here's how it would work. Under current law, misdemeanor marijuana
charges land you anywhere from a $100 to $1000 fine and 15 days to a
year in jail. Those convicted rarely get anything near that much,
sentenced to time served and fined. But under Pataki's proposal, those
caught with pot a fourth time in five years are automatically charged
with a felony, which could bring three and a half years in jail. For
those selling less than an ounce, automatic felonies kick in after the
third misdemeanor, and on the fourth, the mandatory time could jump to
seven years.

The plan to reform the drug laws in the state assembly does not mention
marijuana, which lawmakers placed in a category separate from other
drugs in 1977, decriminalizing it for those who keep small amounts for
personal use. Drug-law reformers are lobbying legislators to reject
Pataki's marijuana riders.

"Proposals of drug-law reform are supposed to be talking about how to
properly reduce the number of prison slots," says Anita Marton, a senior
attorney at the Legal Action Center, "but if you look at his marijuana
proposals, they would lead to an increase in incarceration. The proposal
will ultimately send more people to prison."