END THE WAR

Criminalizing Marijuana Use Is (Still) a Losing Proposition

"Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. ... You see,
homosexuality, dope, immorality in general: These are the enemies of
strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are
pushing this stuff; they're trying to destroy us." --Richard M. Nixon

The question isn't whether weed is inherently good or bad.

Like a lot of things in life, it has the potential to be both.

Tens of thousands here in Michigan rely on it to legally treat
ailments identified by the state's two-year-old medical marijuana
law, and many thousands more use it illegally to help cope with other
medical issues, or simply to relieve the stress of this modern life,
or to have a good time while partying with friends.

In part, it is a matter of perspective. What some consider a form of
relaxation others deem to be an attempt to escape reality, a
dangerous copout for the weak-willed and a sign of some moral failing.

There are also some definite dangers. It can raise a person's heart
rate. Dependency is an issue for many. There are concerns it might
trigger mental illness, especially among adolescents.

Many are able to use the drug responsibly. Others abuse it and have
problems -- either at home or on the job -- as a result. On a
strictly anecdotal basis, a number of people we know smoked it at one
time, but don't anymore. "It makes me paranoid," they say with great
consistency.

It's hard not to wonder, though, if at least some would feel less
paranoid were they not committing a criminal act every time they
light up. Who's to say when a neighbor might catch a whiff of what's
going on and turn you in, or a random drug test at work could end a
job or derail a career?

In that way, paranoia is a natural byproduct of weed in today's America.

The point is, marijuana, which as been used by humans for thousands
of years, has been a significant part of mainstream American life for
more than 40 years now.

And for almost as long, this country has been waging a war -- not on
drugs, but on people.

On our brothers and sisters. On our spouses and our kids.

It has been waging a war on us.

And it is high time that it stops, because this is a way littered
with casualties, and waged at great financial cost, and with no end in sight.

It is a war whose failure was seen even as it was being declared

Twisted Dick

Marijuana had been around for a long time when Richard Nixon declared
in 1971 that, along with the losing campaign then winding down in
Vietnam, America would be entering another kind of war: the War on Drugs.

In part, it was a war on what had long been seen as a medicine.

Here's what Time magazine reported in 2002:

"As early as 2737 B.C., the mystical emperor Shen Neng of China was
prescribing marijuana tea for the treatment of gout, rheumatism,
malaria and, oddly enough, poor memory. The drug's popularity as a
medicine spread throughout Asia, the Middle East and down the eastern
coast of Africa, and certain Hindu sects in India used marijuana for
religious purposes and stress relief. Ancient physicians prescribed
marijuana for everything from pain relief to earaches to childbirth.
Doctors also warned against overuse of marijuana, believing that too
much consumption caused impotence, blindness and 'seeing devils.'"

By the early part of the 20th century, fear of those devils suspected
to be lurking inside marijuana was beginning to attract the attention
of American lawmakers. Although the federal government didn't make
marijuana illegal nationwide until the late 1930s, a number of states
had begun outlawing pot a decade or two earlier.

What was the concern over a plant that much of the country knew
nothing about? Charles Whitebread, a law professor at the University
of Southern California Law School, told a gathering of the California
Judges Association in 1995 that these early attacks on marijuana had
their roots firmly planted in xenophobia.

"The only thing you need to know to understand the early marijuana
laws in the southwest and Rocky Mountain areas of this country is to
know that, in the period just after 1914, into all of those areas was
a substantial migration of Mexicans," Whitebread explained. "They had
come across the border in search of better economic conditions, they
worked heavily as rural laborers, beet field workers, cotton pickers,
things of that sort. And with them, they had brought marijuana.

"Basically, none of the white people in these states knew anything
about marijuana, and I make a distinction between white people and
Mexicans to reflect a distinction that any legislator in one of these
states at the time would have made. And all you had to do to find out
what motivated the marijuana laws in the Rocky Mountain and
southwestern states was to go to the legislative records themselves.
Probably the best single statement was the statement of a proponent
of Texas' first marijuana law. He said on the floor of the Texas
Senate, and I quote, 'All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff
(referring to marijuana) is what makes them crazy.' Or, as the
proponent of Montana's first marijuana law said, (and imagine this on
the floor of the state legislature) and I quote, 'Give one of these
Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a marijuana cigarette
and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona.'

"... And so what was the genesis for the early state marijuana laws
in the Rocky Mountain and southwestern areas of this country? It
wasn't hostility to the drug, it was hostility to the newly arrived
Mexican community that used it." By the 1930s, demonization of
marijuana was reaching a crescendo. Among those leading the attack
was Harry J. Anslinger -- who, as head of the newly created Federal
Bureau of Narcotics, was the first of what would later be referred to
as a drug czar. Joining him in the crusade was newspaper magnate
William Randolph Hearst, the king of yellow journalism who had
purchased vast timber tracts to supply pulp for his papers and didn't
want to see competition from marijuana's cousin, hemp.

Fear of minorities was still a driving force, but by this time it had
expanded beyond Mexican-Americans. A quote widely attributed to
Anslinger offers a clear picture of the ugliness behind the policy:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are
Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music,
jazz and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes
white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and
any others."

Throughout the '40s and '50s and early 1960s, marijuana remained
outside the margins of mainstream white America.

Then the war in Vietnam began to escalate, and the young people being
drafted to go and fight it began to resist. A counterculture emerged,
and the hippies who populated it -- mostly white and middle-class --
embraced marijuana in a big way. Meanwhile a significant number of
troops in Vietnam were toking up in the war zone itself.

By the time Nixon moved into the White House in 1969, a culture war
was in full swing, and Nixon, filled with a venomous paranoia, saw
marijuana as being a key feature of the side that wore its hair long
and had no respect for the authority he desperately clung to.

And so he went to war against the youth that had risen up to protest
the death and destruction occurring in Vietnam.

Nixon was a man who needed enemies, and drugs soon became what he
declared to be "public enemy No. 1."

A new war was declared, even though the people he handpicked to
advise him on exactly how to attack the problem told him that
ratcheting up the criminal consequences was the wrong way to fight it.

Known officially as the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug
Abuse, the group empanelled to analyze the problem and develop a
response was presided over by Raymond Shafer, former Republican
governor of Pennsylvania and former prosecutor who had earned a
reputation as a true anti-drug crusader. Others on the panel were
similarly inclined.

But they took their task seriously, and performed a diligent
examination of the issue. As one writer noted: "They launched 50
research projects, polled the public and members of the criminal
justice community, and took thousands of pages of testimony. Their
work is still the most comprehensive review of marijuana ever
conducted by the federal government."

Tapes from the Nixon White House publicly released in 2002 reveal the
extent to which the administration attempted to strong-arm Shafer to
keep his "commission in line" so that they didn't come off sounding
like a "bunch of do-gooders."

Despite that pressure, the report's authors announced their findings
that an "extensive degree of misinformation about marihuana" existed,
and that it was their duty to "demythologize" it.

Among the commission's findings:

"No significant physical, biochemical or mental abnormalities could
be attributed solely to ... marihuana smoking."

"No verification is found of a causal relationship between marihuana
use and subsequent heroin use."

"Most users, young and old, demonstrate an average or above average
degree of social functioning, academic achievement and job performance."

"In short, marihuana is not generally viewed by participants in the
criminal justice community as a major contributing influence in the
commission of delinquent or criminal acts."

"Neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself an be said to
constitute a danger to public safety."

"Marihuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of
individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a
social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish these who use it."

The commission's bottom line recommendation: No criminal penalties
for simple possession.

Nixon completely ignored the commission's findings, and made taking a
tough stand on drug use one of the central planks of his 1972
re-election campaign.

The war in Vietnam would soon be over, and Nixon, of course, was
driven from office because of his own hidden contempt for the rule of
law he so praised in public.

But the war he declared on us has continued to expand.

In 1971, about 225,000 people were arrested for marijuana-related
offenses. Last year, that number topped 858,000 -- the most ever.

Each of those arrests carries with it an untold personal cost to the
person nabbed.

The annual cost to the federal and state governments for fighting
this war: More than $40 billion.

As for the young people this war is supposed to be protecting, well,
you might say they are the collateral damage of a failed approach.
Marijuana use among U.S. 12th-graders, according to the group
Monitoring the Future, has increased, jumping from 27 percent in 1990
to 32 percent in 2008.

As a result of skyrocketing costs and the ongoing failure to make
great strides in reducing use overall, new approaches are being explored.

Giving Up & Gaining

The idea is extreme, and the estimates are, admittedly, of the
"ballpark" type. But with the nation facing its highest levels of
debt since World War II, and states and local units of government
wading through their own seas of red ink, a pair of economists have
produced an eye-popping study that attempts to calculate how much
money could be save -- and how much revenue could be generated -- if
America hoisted the white flag and declared unconditional surrender
in the War on Drugs.

The bottom line numbers: More than $41.3 billion a year in savings if
the United States gives up on prohibition completely and makes all
drugs legal. And if those same drugs were to be taxed at rates
similar to alcohol and tobacco, the income generated would be
somewhere in the neighborhood of $46.7 billion.

That represents a swing in the neighborhood of $88 billion, which is
not a bad neighborhood at all if you are a lawmaker looking to
balance budgets and continue providing services.

The report was done for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
Conducting the study were Jeffrey A. Miron, who is a senior lecturer
in economics at Harvard, and Katherine Waldock, a doctoral candidate
at New York University's Stern School of Business.

Here's another number to figure into the equation, which is the
probability that the federal and state governments are going to
quickly act to implement the report's recommendations.

That figure, roughly speaking, works out to a ballpark figure of
about zero percent.

For one thing, as the report points out, realizing the full extent of
savings from not pursuing, trying and incarcerating drug dealers and
users is more than a challenge. For this to show up in actual budgets
rather than a hypothetical spreadsheet, "policymakers would have to
lay off police, prosecutors, prison guards, and the like. Because
such a move would be politically painful, it may not occur."

However, even if the cost side of the equation isn't dramatically
reduced, ending prohibition can still be beneficial "if those
criminal justice resources are re-deployed to better uses. ..."
Instead of going after druggers, police would be freed up to
concentrate on killers, robbers, child molesters and other assorted bad guys.

Who knows, maybe law enforcement would have the manpower to go after
corporate criminals as well.

Given the unlikelihood of totally ending prohibition, Miron and
Waldock also calculated the economic benefits that could be derived
if just marijuana were legalized. The estimate that states and the
federal government would save abut $8.7 billion and generate an equal
amount in new tax revenue if pot was no longer a battleground in the drug war.

When Miron produced a similar study in 2005, more than 500 economists
- -- led by conservative stalwart Milton Friedman -- called on the bush
White House to conduct "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition."

However, when shifting from the theoretical to the real world, you
only need to look at the number of Michigan communities that are
passing restrictive zoning ordinances in an attempt to keep
compassion clubs -- dispensary-like operations where medical
marijuana is sold to patients -- from setting up in their towns.

With marijuana still only semi-legal in the state -- it is still in
violation of federal law to buy, sell or use the drug -- the concern
is that these facilities will attract a criminal element.

So, the outright dismantling of prohibition for all drugs anytime
soon seems a farfetched concept at best.

However, as we go to press, Californians are voting on a statewide
ballot measure that would legalize possession of an ounce and allow
personal grows of as much as 25 square feet. Cities and counties
would have the option of being able to authorize commercial
cultivation and retail sales.

The breakdown of proponents and opponents gives insight to how
complicated the issue is. Among those who have come out against the
measure are some of the state's most prominent liberal politicians,
including gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, who is currently the
state's attorney general and formerly occupied the governor's
mansion. Joining him is San Francisco Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne
Feinstein and incumbent Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The
California Chamber of Commerce is opposed, as are some marijuana
growers, who see legalization as an impediment to profits.

Among the reasons given for opposing the measure are concerns about
people driving and showing up for work under the influence, and the
fact that legalization would send the wrong message to youngsters. A
report by the Rand Corp., a nonprofit think tank, predicted that the
price of pot, now selling for about $375 an ounce, could fall to less
than $40 an ounce, and that use would skyrocket as a result.

Also opposing it are nearly all the state's sheriffs, and the
California District Attorneys Association.

Having law enforcement come out against the measure isn't much of a
surprise. What is surprising, perhaps, are all the former cops
speaking up in favor of the measure. Two of them, former San Jose
police chief Joseph McNamara and Stephen Downing, former deputy chief
of the LAPD told the Los Angeles Times that cops still on the job are
invested in a drug war that's supported with federal money and the
proceeds from asset forfeitures. There's also a risk, they said, for
any officer still in uniform to speak out in favor.

"If I stood up as an individual in the time I was at the LAPD, I
would have been rendered completely ineffective," Downing told the paper.

The California Chapter of the NAACP also came out in favor of
legalization, calling it a civil rights issue in that low-income
people of color "bear the disproportionate burden and stigma of
arrest, prosecution and permanent criminal records." Billionaire
financier George Soros put $1 million into the campaign.

Although the race was too close to call at press time, this much is
certain: The mainstream is moving more and more toward the idea that
the risks posed by marijuana use aren't worth the financial costs of
trying to keep it illegal. A Gallup poll take last year found that 44
percent of Americans were in favor of marijuana legalization. That
number has been climbing steadily since 1970, when just 12 percent
said they favored legalization. So the longer pot remains a part of
the culture, and the longer the effort to suppress it drags on, the
more opposition to prohibition grows.

Certainly the passage of medical marijuana laws in 14 states and the
District of Columbia reflects a liberalizing attitude among people in
general. But turning that change into victory at the polls when the
question involves decriminalization for citizens as a whole is far
from a sure thing.

And here's another point to consider for those still trying to
justify the War on Drugs: Why not make the most dangerous
recreational drug of all illegal?

Because that was tried, and it fared miserably. It was called
Prohibition, and the only real practical effect it had was to fuel
the meteoric rise of organized crime in the early part of the last century.

And lest you think that calling alcohol the most dangerous drug is
outrageous hyperbole, take a look at a group of drug experts in
England have concluded:

Scoring a variety of drugs for their potential harm on a scale of
0-100 -- weighing a variety of factors including mortality,
dependence and impairment of mental function, as well as things like
loss of relationships and economic costs -- alcohol obtained what was
by far the highest score with a mark of 72. Heroin got a 55, crystal
meth 33, and tobacco 26. Pot got a 20.

That kind of assessment, however, might not be enough to sway the
Golden State's electorate.

On the eve of California's big election, at least one high-profile
proponent for changing the state's pot law was less than optimistic.
Dale Gieringer, director of the National Organization for Reform of
Marijuana Laws' California chapter, told a reporter from Mother
Jones: "I?have never thought it was likely to pass and it's going
exactly like I expected. You've got an idea which a majority of
people support as a general concept, but when you get down to the
specifics there's a lot of objections that arise."

But there are also examples from elsewhere of why activists should
press on with their efforts to change both minds and policy.

In Praise of Portugal

In 2001, the country of Portugal decriminalized not just marijuana,
but all drugs, including cocaine and heroin.

The results of that bold move were analyzed in a report Glenn
Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer and a contributing writer at
Salon, did for the Cato Institute. This is what he found:

"The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese
decriminalization framework has been a resounding success."

Under the new law, there are no criminal penalties for possession of
any kind of drug if it is intended for personal use -- which is
defined as an amount sufficient to last a person 10 days.

Possession remains prohibited, but infractions are treated as
administrative, not criminal offenses. Cases are handled by what are
called "Commissions for Dissuasions of Criminal Addiction."

The reason for taking this approach was compelling -- and, to
Americans, all too familiar:

"The political impetus for decriminalization was the perception that
drug abuse -- both in itself and its accompanying pathologies -- was
becoming an uncontrollable social problem, and the principal
obstacles to effective government policies to manage the problems
were the treatment barriers and resource drain imposed by the
criminalization regime. Put another way, decriminalization was driven
not by the perception that drug abuse was an insignificant problem,
but rather by the consensus view that it was a highly significant
problem, that criminalization was exacerbating the problem, and that
only decriminalization could enable an effective government response."

Just as is the case in the United States, locking people up for drug
offenses wasn't making things better, it was making them worse.

The difference is that Portuguese leaders accepted that reality and
acted to make changes.

The new policy came about after an extensive study by an "elite" commission.

Read that, and think how much better off we as a country would be --
how much money would not have been wasted, how many lives would not
have been damaged -- if, more than 40 years ago, we would have
followed the advise of the Shafer Commission and sought to fight drug
problems with treatment rather than jail.

The goal wasn't to punish people; rather it was to put the focus on
prevention and ensuring treatment would be available to all drug
addicts who sought help.

Before Portugal changed its law, drug officials acknowledged that the
"most substantial" barrier to treatment of addicts was the fear on
the part of drug users that they would be arrested if they sought
help, particularly from state agencies.

So taking away criminal sanctions and promoting treatment programs
was seen as the "most effective way for reducing addiction and its
accompanying harms."

Among other things, newly reported cases of HIV and AID among drug
users "has declined substantially every year since 2001" when the new
law took effect. Drug related death rates -- which, like HIV and AIDS
cases, were rising before the law was changed -- have fallen
significantly as well.

Think about that, and then consider this 2008 report in the
publication Science Daily:

"A survey of 17 countries has found that, despite its punitive drug
policies, the United States has the highest levels of illegal cocaine
and cannabis use."

Portugal, on the other hand, was among the five countries with the
lowest rates.

The message is clear:

"Around the world, it is apparent that stringent criminalization
policies do not produce lower drug usage rates. If anything, the
opposite trend can be observed. The sky-high and increasing drug
usage rates in the highly criminalized United States, juxtaposed with
the relatively low and manageable rates in decriminalized Portugal,
make a very strong case for that proposition."

Is the message sinking in?

Apparently not with U.S. officials overseeing drug policy.

As Greenwald reports:

"According to [European Union] drug policy officials, the United
States has displayed very little interest in understanding the
improving trends in Europe generally, and in Portugal specifically,
that have clearly resulted in an environment of drug liberalization
and decriminalization. Quite the contrary, over the last two decades
the United States has single-mindedly agitated for greater
criminalization approaches and appears, at least to the EU officials,
interested solely in enforcement actions rather than empirically
vindicated policy changes at the use level designed to manage usage
rates and ameliorate drug-related harms."

Where to Start?

Dan Solano doesn't need to be convinced that prohibition is a losing
proposition. Having seen the War on Drugs both from the perspective
of a guy wearing a uniform and badge and that of a medical marijuana
user once led from his house in handcuffs, he has no doubts that
liberalized laws are the most effective way to combat drug use,
especially among kids.

But he doesn't think the United States is ready to end prohibition
completely. However, with the passage of medical marijuana laws in
Michigan and other states, he sees the pendulum swinging in the right
direction.

Solano has a rare perspective on the whole debate.

One of 14 kids from a Mexican-American family, he grew up in
southwest Detroit, enlisting in the Marines for a three-year hitch
before joining the Detroit Police Department in 1989. He patrolled
the city's streets for four years until a suspect he'd pulled over
rammed him with a car, dragging him along, causing all sorts of
injuries. He underwent more than a dozen surgeries over two years,
but the worst injury was to his head.

He had to relearn how to do just about everything -- read, write,
talk. After recovering and returning to work at a desk job, he
retired in 1994. The pain from his injuries was intense, and
constant. And he hated the prescription meds, especially the Vicodin
and Oxycontin.

Then a friend suggested he try smoking pot to relieve the pain. It
worked like a charm, and launched him on the road to activism. Early
in this decade he founded the group Police Officers for Drug Law
Reform, and then helped launch a larger national group, Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

It was that activism, he says, that attracted the attention of the
FBI, and led to his arrest on what he says were "bogus" cultivation
charges, which ended up getting dropped within a few weeks.

Unlike his peers in LEAP, Solano isn't pressing for a total end to
prohibition at this point. Given the pushback many municipalities are
engaging in as they respond to medical marijuana dispensaries opening
in Michigan, he doesn't see lawmakers being ready to take that big of
a step forward.

For now, he has his sights set on just ending the war against marijuana users.

So maybe we won't see the legalization or decriminalization of
heroin, crack or speed anytime soon.

But he does see the day approaching when public pressure will reach
the point where politicians will be forced to adhere to what he
perceives as simple common sense and stop a war that is both terribly
costly and needlessly hurtful.

And also counterproductive, especially when it comes to keeping drugs
out of the hands of kids.

Just as a bar or liquor store owner will card people to make sure
they are of age to keep from losing their license -- and hence their
livelihood -- a licensed dispensary won't sell pot to minors. It's
not worth the risk.

Illegal drug dealers, on the other hand, are already breaking the
law, so they'll sell to anybody.

He's sees it as his job to keep spreading that message.

Momentum is building.

The outcome is inevitable, he says. It is only a matter of time.

"There's just too much empirical evidence that our drug policies are
a failure," he says. "I can't figure out why there is still so much
resistance to taxing and regulating marijuana. But that resistance is
going to crumble. It is inevitable."

It's just a matter of people like him continuing to be active, and
getting the facts out.