THE WHITNEY HOUSTON RULES

The hypocrisy of America's marijuana laws is highlighted by the
glamorous singer's non-arrest after she's found with a half-ounce of
pot in an airport.

Just why security guards at Keahole Airport in Kona, Hawaii, let
singer Whitney Houston board a plane after discovering 15.2 grams of
marijuana in her bag in January remains for them to know and us to
find out. Just as unclear, Hawaiian law enforcement officials are
belatedly telling us, is the final disposition of her case. But no
matter what ends up happening to Houston, the incident points up the
absurd inconsistency of America's laws, attitudes and rhetoric about
marijuana.

When APBNews reported on April 13 that Hawaii prosecutors had decided
not to press charges against Houston because airport security guards,
as private employees, did not have the authority to detain passengers,
it looked suspiciously like a rampant case of favoritism. Starstruck
security guards giving a free pass to a celebrity caught red-handed
with half an ounce of weed. It wasn't until after months of media
coverage that the state's Office of the Prosecuting Attorney felt
impelled to issue a press release: Last week it stated that "it has
been incorrectly reported that a decision has been made not to
prosecute Ms. Houston." Now her fate seemed to hang on whether or not
a P.R.-conscious prosecutor's office decided she needed to be made an
example of.

As has been widely reported, Houston and her husband, singer Bobby
Brown, were going through a security checkpoint in January, when a
guard found and seized the marijuana.

Houston and Brown left the bag behind and boarded their flight to San
Francisco, despite reported attempts by security guards to detain
them. Security guards called local police, but none were on the
premises and it took a long time -- perhaps as long as a half hour --
for them to arrive.

When they did, the plane was taxiing down the runway. Authorities
allowed it to take off.

Why Houston was allowed to board the plane after marijuana was found
in her bag, and why the plane was allowed to take off even after local
police had been called to the scene, are questions that are entangled
in a confusing web of jurisdictional, policy and legal issues.

The confusion is not dispelled by the conflicting, and apparently
inaccurate, statements Hawaiian authorities have issued about the incident.

All inquiries to Keahole Airport security were referred to Marilyn
Kali, a public affairs officer for the Department of Transportation,
who said that Houston was going through the metal detector "when the
agricultural inspector saw something that was organic in the bag and
requested a further search ... because you can't take agricultural
products to the mainland from Hawaii. They asked to look at her purse,
she gave it to them and she left."

Kali said that security then called the police, but "the closest
police are about a half hour away" and by the time they arrived, the
plane was already taxiing. Asked why they didn't delay the plane in
order to wait for the police to arrive, Kali replied, "That I don't
know." After a pause, she ventured a guess: Because "they knew who the
person was?"

Kali also stated that the guards who discovered the drugs were not
hired by the state, but by Aloha Airlines and United Airlines, and, as
such, did not have the authority to detain passengers: "They are just
there to screen them." If they discover something, Kali said, "then
there is another security force that can actually detain them if
necessary." That security force was "aware of it, but I don't know why
they chose not to detain her," even though the police had been called.

Buck Donham, public information officer for the Hawaii County Police
Department, gives a slightly different version of what happened.

According to Donham, Houston was going through the metal detectors
when the X-ray machine detected an unidentifiable item in her bag.
Security officers (not agricultural inspectors) asked if they could
search the bag, and found the marijuana. Houston then left the bag
behind and boarded her plane.

Donham stated that the guards were hired by the state (giving them the
authority to seize the drugs and call the police), and confirmed that
no police officers were present at the airport at the time. The plane
was not held after the arrival of police, Donham said, because
possession of 15.2 grams of marijuana "only constitutes a petty
misdemeanor," carrying a maximum fine of $1,000 and/or a maximum jail
sentence of 30 days.

Passing over the minor discrepancies in their accounts (Kali appears
to have erred by saying that the guards were doing an agricultural
inspection, Donham by asserting that they were hired by the state),
both officials essentially explain the incident by saying that the
security guards who found the marijuana didn't have the right to
detain her, let alone arrest her, and that mere logistics (the fact
that police weren't on the premises) prevented her from being arrested.

In effect, they're saying that she escaped by falling through the
cracks -- implicitly arguing that the same thing could happen to anyone.

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws Foundation (NORML), scoffed at the notion
that Houston received typical treatment. "If this were a pimple-faced
Deadhead, a Phish kind of guy, the prototypical marijuana user, and he
was a first-time offender, 20 years old, and the same scenario
happened in Hawaii, he would have been arrested, he would be
searched," St. Pierre said. "They would have posted bond. He would
have had to get a lawyer. Then, of course, he would have to agree to
come back for a hearing." Furthermore, according to St. Pierre, people
who try to evade airport security "usually face secondary or tertiary
charges. [Houston] avoided all of that."

Todd Eddins, a senior felony trial attorney in the public defender's
office in Honolulu, said that while he found it hard to believe there
were no police officers on the premises, he thought it was possible
that screeners might not have the authority to arrest a passenger
carrying contraband. But, he added, "One would think that they would
have some guidelines" for dealing with that situation until the police
arrive.

"I tell you what," says Eddins on reflection, "If she did this in
Honolulu she would have been snagged right away, because there are
cops all over the place ... My guess is she would have never got on
the plane."

Joseph McNamara, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and
retired police chief of San Jose who is an outspoken opponent of
American drug policy, was skeptical about claims that the security
guards didn't have the right to detain Houston and that there were no
police available. "The Supreme Court has ruled that you do not have
Fourth Amendment rights of privacy when you go through airport
security, you waive them in the interest of airline security,"
McNamara said. "The security people can't make an arrest.

They don't have peace officer status, they are civilian airline
employees.

They notify the police.

And every major airport in the U.S. has major police
presence."

McNamara said he found it hard to believe that there were no police in
the Kona airport. "Some years ago the Hawaii police were criticized
for being overly zealous in tracking and watching criminals and
forcing them to get back on planes.

Hawaii is one of the strictest states on drugs."

Of the Houston case, McNamara said, "What happens time and time again
in the drug war is that big shots are treated differently from other
people. Ordinarily you are subject to mandatory sentence.

This goes on all the time with relatives of congressmen and senators
where rules that are mandatory for others don't seem to apply.

It happens to some black kid in the inner city, he gets life in the
slammer."

If McNamara and St. Pierre are right that the typical marijuana user,
if caught in Houston's situation, would not have benefited from the
same legal wiggle-room that allowed the glamorous singer to board the
plane, it's hard not to conclude that celebrity favoritism was at
play. But even if St. Pierre is wrong, Houston's case -- and our
reaction to it -- reveals the blatant double standard that applies to
marijuana in the United States. Houston, so far, has gone completely
unpunished for an alleged offense that, in a virulently anti-marijuana
state like Texas, might well have earned her a prison term.

Of course, everyone knows that marijuana laws vary from state to state
and city to city. But this inconsistency makes a mockery of federal
pronouncements about the drug. The disconnect between pious official
moralizing about marijuana and the wildly uneven enforcement of the
laws is a subject nobody likes to talk about, but it is a scandal.

As thousands of people languish in jails and prisons across America,
serving long sentences for nothing more than simple possession of
marijuana, it offends the sense of fairness that others are let off
with a slap on the wrist or no punishment at all.

The United States has to either put its money where its tough-talking
mouth is, or its mouth where its money is, on marijuana.

Until the nation implements a fairer and more uniform criminal policy
toward marijuana, whether as harsh as Texas or as apparently lax as
places like the San Francisco Bay Area, we will continue to be enraged
when people like Whitney Houston walk -- and enraged for different
reasons when they don't.