PALIN'S DOUBLE STANDARD ON MARIJUANA

When it comes to questions about youthful marijuana use, Sarah Palin
is no Slick Willie. "I can't claim a Bill Clinton and say that I
never inhaled," the Republican vice presidential candidate told the
Anchorage Daily News in 2006, before she was elected governor of Alaska.

Palin has the difficulty reconciling her personal experience with her
policy positions, a problem also shared by former pot smoker Barack
Obama. Neither of them has a persuasive answer to the question of why
other Americans should be arrested for something they did with impunity.

Pot smokers who are arrested do not typically spend much time in
jail. But as a 2007 report from the Center for Cognitive Liberty &
Ethics noted, they pay a substantial cost that includes not only
public humiliation and legal expenses but also collateral sanctions
such as "revocation or suspension of professional licenses, barriers
to employment or promotion, loss of educational aid, driver's license
suspension, and bars on adoption, voting and jury service."

According to figures the FBI released this week, about 873,000 people
were arrested on marijuana charges in the United States last year, a
record. Pot busts accounted for nearly half of the 1.8 million drug
arrests; as usual, the vast majority, about 775,000, were for simple
possession, as opposed to cultivation or sale.

This is the fifth year in a row marijuana arrests have increased, an
upward trend that began in the early 1990s. Three times as many
people were arrested on marijuana charges last year as in 1991. The
increase in arrests does not correspond to an increase in use;
instead, the chance that any given pot smoker will be busted (though
still small) is much higher than it was two decades ago. It is also
higher than when Palin attended college in the '80s, which is
presumably when she tried marijuana.

By way of extenuation, the Anchorage Daily News reported, Palin noted
that marijuana "was legal under state law," although "illegal under
U.S. law." In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the state
constitution, which says the "right of the people to privacy is
recognized and shall not be infringed," prohibits the government from
punishing people for possessing small amounts of marijuana in their homes.

A 1990 ballot initiative ostensibly recriminalized all marijuana
possession, but in 2003, the Alaska Court of Appeals ruled that "a
statute which purports to attach criminal penalties to
constitutionally protected conduct is void." The following year, the
Alaska Supreme Court declined to hear the state's appeal of that decision.

In 2006, the state Legislature, at the urging of Palin's predecessor,
Frank Murkowski, passed another law that supposedly made private
possession of marijuana for personal use a crime. A judge found that
law unconstitutional as well, and the Alaska Supreme Court is
considering an appeal of her ruling.

The upshot is that smoking marijuana in the privacy of one's home is
just as legal in Alaska today as it was when Palin did it. Evidently,
she regrets this.

As Wasilla mayor in 2000, Palin championed a city council resolution
opposing a ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana for
adults. In March her administration asked the Alaska Supreme Court to
reverse its 1975 decision shielding private marijuana use, arguing
the drug is more dangerous than it used to be.

In other words, Palin got to smoke pot without worrying about legal
consequences and now wants to deny that assurance to fellow Alaskans
doing exactly the same thing. "Palin doesn't support legalizing
marijuana," the Anchorage Daily News reported in 2006, because she
worries about "the message it would send to her four kids."

It's Palin's job to teach her children that certain pleasures are
reserved for grownups. The government should not continue to arrest
adults who are harming no one simply because her children are easily confused.