PREACHING TO CONVERTS

Drug Policy Reform Enters a New Era--of Hard Work

Medical marijuana is finally happening--but distributing it may be
the least of New Mexico's worries.

Such was the conceit of the International Drug Policy Reform
Conference, which began just days after New Mexico's Department of
Health approved four new medical marijuana producers to field demand
from the state's 755 patients.

The conference, a three-day event held at the Albuquerque Convention
Center, featured attendees clad in a broad and fascinating variety of
pot-themed T-shirts, as well as workshops and panels galore on
subjects ranging from "Marijuana's Cultural Moment" to new
developments in psychedelics. There was talk of "the movement" and
the future, but the post-Obama cynicism that seems to have hit like a
cold front everywhere else was notably absent.

Given the statistics, drug activists' optimism is hardly baseless. An
Oct. 19 Gallup Poll finds that 44 percent of Americans support
legalizing marijuana, the highest figure ever; in 2003, another poll
found that 75 percent support allowing doctors to prescribe medical
marijuana. And in Colorado, according to Sensible Colorado Executive
Director Brian Vicente, the number of medical marijuana dispensaries
jumped from 4,000 to more than 30,000 in 2009 alone.

But the regulations and infrastructure to turn those numbers into
reality aren't in place yet, and they vary widely: As New Mexico
tiptoes around its 2007 legislation allowing medical marijuana,
licensing only a very few producers at a time, states like California
are awash in marijuana dispensaries--and not without ideological
blowback and a rise in raids by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

"If only we had a system as clear as New Mexico [does], I think we'd
be in great shape," Alex Kreit, who chairs the San Diego task force
charged with developing better regulations for local medical
marijuana dispensaries, lamented during a panel discussion that
featured Vicente, American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Allen
Hopper, Marijuana Policy Project Director of State Policies Karen
O'Keefe and Steve Jenison, the medical director of the New Mexico
Department of Health's Infectious Disease Bureau.

"Our process has been deliberate, which you can also read as 'slow,'"
Jenison told a room packed with advocates, reporters and medical
marijuana patients. "But our process will be a very sustainable one.
We build a lot of consensus before we do anything."

Jenison also defended New Mexico's nonprofit production model, which
he said grew out of the concern that medical marijuana might end up
on the black market.

"A not-for-profit being regulated by the state would be less likely
to be a source of diversion to the illicit market," Jenison said.

Hopper emphasized the importance of such step-by-step regulation: Not
only does it help states avoid a disordered mass of
dispensaries--which, according to some, is the situation in
California--but well-defined state regulations also negate the need
for federal oversight. And that's exactly the thrust of the US
Department of Justice memo released on Oct. 19, Hopper said: to
prompt states to impose their own regulations so the federal
government won't have to intervene.

"The greater the degree of state involvement, the more the federal
government [is] going to leave the state alone," Hopper said.

Meanwhile, in other conference rooms, decriminalization was a major
point of focus. New Mexico State Rep. Antonio "Moe" Maestas,
D-Bernalillo, plans to champion a "treatment not incarceration" bill
in the 30-day legislative session that begins in January.

"In New Mexico, possession of narcotics or illegal drugs is a
fourth-degree felony [with an] 18-month penalty," Maestas tells SFR.
"This bill made it mandatory for persons with no felony history to
get mandatory treatment as opposed to incarceration." Maestas says
the bill didn't pass during the 2009 session in part because its
critics argued that the necessary treatment facilities and
infrastructure don't yet exist. This year, Maestas says he hopes to
avoid that "cart-horse argument" because it distracts from the real
issue: Incarceration for drug violations is inhumane and, he says, expensive.

"Putting someone in prison for 18 months...is a lot more costly and
does nothing to protect the community," Maestas says. "I don't think
anyone could argue with a straight face that treatment is more
expensive than incarceration." To that end, Maestas says he'll work
with Drug Policy Alliance of New Mexico and other supporters--which
include Santa Fe-based immigrants' rights group Somos Un Pueblo
Unido--to combine government-led incentives for drug treatment
infrastructure with a push to get the "treatment not incarceration"
bill passed.

"It is ridiculous to spend $60,000 or $100,000 to house a drug addict
[in prison]," Maestas says. "Taxpayers should not spend X amount of
dollars to babysit a drug addict. It seems mean-spirited but, sadly,
those are the arguments that win the day."

As much progress as New Mexico seems to be making in drug policy
reform, other areas still present a significant challenge. Since the
late 1990s, the state has had one of the highest overdose death rates
in the US and, this August, the New Mexico Department of Health
released a report that shows a spike in heroin-related and overall
overdose death rates between 2007 and 2008.

In a discussion titled "Rural Harm Reduction," panelists focused on
the particular obstacles to drug abuse treatment and overdose
prevention in remote areas like northern New Mexico, where Jeanne
Block, a harm-reduction contract nurse, works to help drug users help
themselves. Even though the area has only one methadone clinic and
relatively few harm-reduction workers, Block said she's "proud of New
Mexico--it's really amazing the services we can provide with not much money."

Still, the logistics of delivering overdose prevention drugs like
naloxone (brand name Narcan) to isolated, insular communities can be
daunting at best.

"We've worked with grandparents, parents and young adults or young
teen children who are all addicted to heroin," Block said. "It's not
like the one kid got addicted to heroin and the parents are like,
'How do I help him?' This is generations."

Panelist W Azul La Luz B underscored the need not just for better
harm reduction and overdose prevention, but also for mental health
treatment. A medical sociologist at the University of New Mexico, La
Luz said he reviewed 12 years of accidental drug overdose data and
every case, he recalled, involved the use of several different
substances--sometimes as many as 37.

"To me, that's not an overdose; that's a suicide," La Luz said. And
without mental health treatment in place to help those people, he
added, "it's catch and release"--only to reoccur later.

Still, anecdotal evidence seems to support the theory that slow
change creates lasting change--and if New Mexico's deliberate medical
marijuana program is any indication of the state's future drug
policies, there's no need to despair--nor, for that matter, to be complacent.

"We've got to be relentless, always on the offensive," Maestas
exhorted conference-goers. "There's a huge crack in the dam, and that
dam is gonna burst! We've got to bring the torches to the castle gate!"

The applause was deafening.