REEFER MADNESS

The Highs And Lows Of Marijuana Reform

Sometime near the end of the turbulent '60s, Dr. David Edwards' children
presented him with a dilemma. On one hand, they were hearing from
classmates about the wonders of marijuana and how it wasn't that
harmful. On the other, narcotics officers insisted that marijuana was a
demon drug that could seduce you with its intoxicating buzz and never let
you go.

"Which is it, dad?" they asked the Los Angeles pathologist.

Edwards had never looked into the issue before, assuming that what he'd
learned from anti-marijuana movies like Reefer Madness was true. He
promised, however, that he'd do some research on the subject, and what he
found out was enough to prompt him to support Proposition 19, a marijuana
decriminalization initiative that failed by a 2-to1 vote in California in 1972.

"The more I read about the subject, the more ridiculous were the claims [by
anti-marijuana advocates]," Edwards said. As far as I could tell from
reading the medical literature, the biggest harm that could happen to you
is you could get a criminal record."

Edwards advised his children that he didn't want them to do drugs, that
he'd rather they get high on "life, learning and love," but also said that
if they felt compelled to do a drug, he'd prefer that they smoke marijuana
instead of drinking alcohol.

For the past 30 years, nothing Edwards has come across has caused him to
change that opinion. In fact, when Edwards moved to Washington in the
early 1990s to retire, he became one of the founding members of the
Washington Hemp Education Network (WHEN) and remains active to this day in
the movement to reform marijuana laws.

It's a movement that has been gaining momentum across the nation. New
Mexico's Republican Governor, Gary Johnson, has called the War on Drugs a
"failure" and argues that we could save the billions of dollars spent each
year on the drug war by taking the crime out of personal drug use. In
June, the Hawaiian State Legislature passed a law legalizing medical
marijuana, and in six other states, voters have overwhelmingly passed
measures supporting medical marijuana.

Washington, of course, is one of those states, having passed Initiative 692
by a 59-to-41 percent margin in 1998, but has not merely been at the
forefront of the medicinal side of marijuana. The Washington Democratic
Party's 2000 platform came out June 10 with sweeping language that calls
for many changes in our state's drug policy: a group of drug-reform
activists in the Seattle area are attempting to get an initiative placed on
the ballot that would take drug offenders out of the prison system and put
them in treatment wile also decriminalizing personal marijuana possession,
thus making possession of a small amount of pot punishable only by a fine,
instead of mandatory jail time.

"We are making progress," said Edwards. "At first, I was just interested
in the medicinal aspect of marijuana. But the more I read about the drug
war, the more absurd the prohibition of personal and industrial uses of
hemp appears. I've gotten more and more involved and I will not leave
until it's all over with or until I'm no longer here."

While some might think that the Clinton Administration would have eased the
pace of arrests for marijuana users, the reality couldn't be further from
the truth.

According to FBI statistics, since Clinton took office, close to 3.5
million Americans have been arrested for marijuana. In 1997, 695,200
people were busted-twice the amount arrested in 1993, the year Clinton
became president.

Voting for Pot

In Washington, voters have twice had the opportunity to reform drug laws:
first with Initiative 685 in 1997, which failed by a 60-to-40 percent
margin, and again with Initiative 692 in 1998.

Voters were suspicious of the broad changes that 685 would have passed,
such as allowing doctors to prescribe any Schedule 1 drug, including heroin
and cocaine. Voters were more comfortable when 685's author, Dr. Rob
Killian, presented them with 692, an initiative that focused strictly on
medical marijuana reform.

Washington joined six other states-Arizona, California, Oregon, Alaska,
Maine and Nevada-in passing medical marijuana initiatives (though Nevada's
constitution requires two votes be taken before an initiative becomes a law
and citizens will vote again this fall). These voters plus 34 state
legislatures and the District of Columbia have all passed laws recognizing
marijuana's medicinal value, which flies in the face of United States Drug
czar Barry McCaffrey's recent comment at a national conference on addiction
that "a lot of this is a crock." (Just why a man with military-not
medical-credentials is in charge of drug policy has never been credibly
answered by our government. And why do they have to call him a czar?)

Since 692 passed, there have been a few problems implementing the law, as
it conflicts with federal laws that define marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug
and strictly outlaw it. (An interesting side note is that it is the Drug
Enforcement Agency-the department that profits most from the Drug War-that
determined the scheduling of marijuana, not the Food and Drug
Administration. Schedule 1 drugs are defined as "unsafe substances with a
high potential for abuse that have no accepted medical values.")

First, there is the issue of just what, exactly, constitutes a 60-day
supply. The initiative states that medicinal users can possess "no more
than a 60-day amount," yet nowhere does the initiative actually establish
how much weed equals a 60-day supply. Last August, Western Washington's
leading federal prosecutor, US Attorney Kate Pflaumer, told Seattle police
that her office is not interested in busting patients possessing a 60-day
supply, and went on to define a 60-day supply as "fewer than 250
plants." She stated, however, that the 250-plant number remains flexible
and that "it would be a mistake to say we've given immunity to a certain
number of plants. It depends on the circumstances."

State senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle) has been the state's leading
political proponent of medical marijuana research. Twice, she has
attempted to pass language through the state legislature that would mandate
that the state Department of Health clarify what a 60-day supply is, but
both bills failed to get out of the House of Representatives.

"I think this issue is going to have to be settled by a test case in
court," Edwards said.

The second issue is just how to get the medicine to the patients. Many
patients suffer from debilitating diseases like AIDS, MS and various forms
of cancer, making it a struggle to tend to and grow their own
plants. Furthermore, for a patient to obtain marijuana, he or she still
must commit a crime by procuring either the seeds or the drug itself illegally.

Local law enforcement has not followed the bust-'em-and-take-their-pot
route that California police took after Proposition 215 passed in
1996. Instead, the police have, for the most part, looked the other way.

"Since 1998, it's been a lot better," says Joanna McKee, who runs the Green
Cross Co-Op with partner Stitch Miller in Seattle. "It took a while for
police to interpret the law, but it has usually worked out since then."

The not-for-profit Green Cross Co-Op is the largest medical marijuana
distributor in Western Washington, serving close to 1,000 patients. Seventy
percent of those patients have AIDS, 20 percent have MS and 10 percent
suffer from glaucoma, epilepsy or cancer.

Members must go through a screening process, during which they are asked to
provide answers to questions such as, "Why is marijuana better than the
drugs you are taking?" Most importantly, they must provide a doctor's
signature.

Compassion In Action, a Capitol Hill-based medical marijuana supplier, has
addressed the issue of patients who can't go to the Green Cross Co-Op by
setting up a delivery service. Still, problems remain for the thousands of
patients who remain outside of Western Washington, and even for those who
live in Tacoma.

Last year, says McKee, a Tacoma man was arrested by an undercover officer
for selling marijuana to patients with debilitating diseases. To this day,
there are no Tacoma co-ops in operation.

"The reason for that is that you have to be willing to go to jail to open a
co-op," says McKee, who went to jail twice after her co-op opened in
1993. She added that one of her patients lives in Olympia and brings
marijuana to Olympia-area patients.

While the distribution issue still has a few quirks to work out, the area
of who is eligible for medical marijuana isn't quite so muddied. Just
recently, the state's Medical Quality Assurance Commission added diseases
whose symptoms include nausea, vomiting, severe weight loss, cramping or
appetite loss to the list of "terminal or debilitating medical conditions"
that can be treated with marijuana. This follows a previous action wherein
the commission approved Hepatitis C and Crohn's Disease (a gastrointestinal
disease) for treatment with marijuana.

Though the board declined to add insomnia and post-traumatic-stress
disorder to the list, Dr. Rob Killian, who petitioned the board to add the
diseases, said the commission has "done more than any other state in the
country in listening to patients' needs and allowing truly suffering people
to have access to marijuana."

Washington, then, is one of the nation's trendsetters with regard to
medical marijuana. But marijuana reformers don't want to stop there. They
point out that there are two critical uses of
marijuana-personal/recreational use and industrial use- and say
overwhelming amounts of evidence prove government policies, once again, a
little backward.

Hemp can be utilized to make plastics, paper, paints, clothing, textiles,
cosmetics, foodstuffs, insulation and animal feed, but while the issue of
industrial-use hemp has yet to be presented to Washingtonian voters, the
personal use of marijuana has already been the subject of some debate.

A Reasonable Initiative

Historically, voters have not been convinced that personal use should be
decriminalized. In 1997, Initiative 685 included treatment instead of
imprisonment for those convicted of possession for the first two offenses:
voters denied the initiative by a 59-to-41 percent margin.

But proponents for a new initiative entitled the Reasonable People's
Initiative, argue that public opinion is changing and are making a
last-minute dash to get enough signatures to qualify I-746 for the
ballot. They need 180,000 by July 7 and are currently quite short of that
number.

While the initiative would decriminalize marijuana possession, it would
also replace imprisonment with treatment for offenders caught with harder
drugs, like cocaine and heroin. They argue that the state's prisons are
overcrowding (Pierce County recently began construction of a $53 million,
1,000-bed addition to its jail) and that law enforcement resources could be
better spent on more serious crimes, like murder and rape.

Furthermore, says initiative-backer Robert Lunday, the Washington
Association of Sheriffs and Police recorded that of all drug arrests in
1998, 85 percent were for simple possession, and of all marijuana arrests
in the same year, 91 percent were for possession.

"It is not the drug kingpins they are arresting," Lunday says. "In fact, it
is just people who are simply caught with possessing the drugs."

Lunday also points out that the Washington State Institute of Public
Policy, which advises the state legislature, reported that for every
offender that is sent to one of the state's drug courts instead of to
prison, the state saves $4,900.

"Millions of dollars could be saved if we diverted users to treatment
instead of prison," Lunday says. "A drug addict needs treatment and there
is very little treatment in prison. In fact, it's not that hard for him to
get drugs in prison, so when he comes out, he's still got a problem."

While it's doubtful the initiative will get the number of signatures
required to make the ballot, Lunday's organization is setting a precedent
by using the Internet to get the petition to voters. Voters can download
the petition as an Adobe PDF file and then mail it to the Reasonable
People's Campaign, who will then take it to the Secretary of State's office.

Even if the initiative does not make the ballot this year, it will serve to
open more dialogue on the issue, says Edwards.

Democratic Drug Reform

Another breakthrough for drug reform occurred on June 10 when the state's
Democratic Party included this sentence in its platform: "We support
decriminalization of marijuana. We believe drug use to be a concern for
the medical community, not a criminal issue."

Beyond marijuana decriminalization, the party is calling for 1) the
elimination of mandatory minimum sentences, 2) alternatives to
incarceration for most non-violent drug offenders and 3) a ban on drug
testing, except for jobs involving the public's safety.

While some Democratic candidates are already distancing themselves from the
platform, having the issue on the platform can only be a step in the right
direction, argues Edwards.

"The implications of this is that it is a much more accepting, relaxed
atmosphere that allows this issue to be talked about," Edwards said. "It
would be very foolish for hempsters to say that because this is on the
platform anybody running will have to support this because the Republicans
will jump all over a candidate that did that. However, I'm not sure the
Republicans are going to want to do that because then it would legitimize
debate and their side doesn't stand up too well to debate."

Absurd Arguments

Most arguments against the personal use of marijuana seem to center around
the notion of protecting our children. In an editorial that lambasted the
Democratic Party for "dipping into the funny stuff," the Seattle Times
wrote that the party's platform "sends the wrong message. Parents do their
best to keep kids away from drugs of all kinds." Yet the editorial goes on
to recognize that the resolution calls for the legalization of pot sales
through cafes, bars and liquor stores to people over the age of 21.

Studies by the federal government show that the current drug war has done
little to stop youth access to marijuana. In 1975, 87 percent of youths
said it was "very easy" or "fairly easy" to obtain marijuana. Twenty-three
years later, 89.6% percent said it was easily obtainable.

While one might think ridiculous arguments from drug warriors disappeared
with the Just-Say-No Reagan era, they continue to this day. In 1997, when
I-685 was being debated, the state's top drug warrior, Lieutenant Governor
Brad Owen, made this unsubstantiated statement: "The drug legalization
effort in the state of Washington and nationally has caused use to start
back up again."

Another argument that is constantly made is that marijuana is a "gateway"
drug to harder drugs. Just last year, researchers with the Institute of
Medicine produced a federally commissioned report that disputes this notion.

"There is no conclusive evidence that the drug affects of marijuana are
causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs," the
report's executive summary declared. It goes on to state that the few
marijuana users who do go on to use harder drugs likely do so because of
social factors-like the drug's illegal status-rather than the
pharmacological properties of marijuana itself. As Edwards points out,
marijuana's illegality means it is often sold by dealers who are pushing
harder drugs as well.

The arguments come as no surprise to Edwards, who says that "drug warriors"
have to make these huge (but unsubstantiated) kinds of claims to validate
their behavior and the draconian laws they defend.

"It's a house of cards," Edwards says, "If marijuana is approved, the whole
(drug war) goes up in smoke. You've got 15-20 million 'criminals' who
smoke marijuana and 1-2 million hard drug users. One-to-two million people
do not justify the $19 billion we are currently spending every year on the
War on Drugs. That's why they equate marijuana with the harder drugs, and
that's why they are fighting changing marijuana to a Schedule II drug
because then it would come out very quickly that, 'Hey, it's not that
dangerous' and the whole house of cards would tumble."

For more information on marijuana reform, contact the following:

1. Washington Hemp Education Network (www.olywa.net/when), voicemail: (360)
866-6523.

2. Green Cross Co-Op (www.hemp.net/greencross/greencross.html), phone:
(206) 762-0630.

3. Reasonable People's Campaign: (www.reasonablepeople.org), phone: (206)
781-8144.