BREAKING THE TABOO

The prospects for reforming drug policy have never been so good. The
persistent failure and negative consequences of drug war policies,
combined with budgetary woes and generational change, are
mainstreaming reformist ideas once considered taboo.

Nowhere is this convergence more evident than with respect to
marijuana. In 1969, when Gallup first asked Americans if they support
legalizing marijuana use, 12 percent were in favor.

Support hovered in the mid-20s for many years, then started drifting
upward--from 25 percent in 1995 to 36 percent in 2005. In October, at
the height of the landmark campaign for legalization in California,
the latest Gallup poll found 46 percent in favor nationally, with 50
percent opposed.

Prop 19 garnered 46.5 percent of the vote--and roughly a quarter of
Californians who voted against it said they favored legalization but
were hesitant to vote yes for one reason or another.

Criminal justice reformers know that marijuana offenses account for
"only" 50,000-100,000 of the roughly 500,000 Americans behind bars
for a drug law violation, but arrests for marijuana possession
represent 45 percent of the 1.7 million drug arrests made annually in
recent years. And as Queens College professor Harry Levine has amply
documented, African-Americans and Latinos are arrested for marijuana
offenses at dramatically higher rates than whites, even though they
are no more likely to use or possess marijuana.

It's only a matter of time before the racial justice implications of
marijuana prohibition and legalization overcome the cultural
conservatism of African-American and Latino communities.

According to the Gallup poll, 58 percent of Americans who live in the
West now favor legalizing marijuana use. It's thus highly likely that
2012 will see more legalization initiatives in Western states, and
with the support of young people--who consistently say they care a
lot about this issue and turn out in higher numbers for presidential
elections--a few may actually succeed.

Unfortunately, the recent Republican takeover of the House does not
bode well for other aspects of drug policy reform.

Lamar Smith, the incoming Judiciary Committee chair, was the only
member of Congress to speak out last summer against the bipartisan
reform of crack cocaine sentencing laws. Republican control may also
undermine recent progress on issues like medical marijuana and
federal funding for needle exchange. Elsewhere, New Mexico's incoming
Republican governor, Susanna Martinez, is a prosecutor who has
threatened to shut down the state's tightly run medical marijuana
program, and New Jersey's Governor Chris Christie seems determined to
strangle his state's nascent medical marijuana program with
nonsensical regulations.

If there's a silver lining on the Republican surge, it's that
conservatives' penchant for cutting government spending extends even
to the drug war. Conservative organizations like the Heritage
Foundation and Americans for Tax Reform have supported eliminating
the federal boondoggle for local police known as the Byrne grant program.

Some also favor eliminating funding for the National Youth Anti-Drug
Media Campaign, student drug testing and Plan Colombia as part of
broader spending cuts. Liberal organizations would do well to embrace
such proposals.

But all is not lost around the country.

Incoming Vermont Governor Pete Shumlin introduced a marijuana
decriminalization bill when he was in the state legislature and
favors harm-reduction policies with respect to other drugs.

Rhode Island's new governor, Lincoln Chafee, seems to get it too.
Prospects for drug policy reform will be better in Connecticut
without Republican Governor Jodi Rell, who vetoed medical marijuana
legislation and blocked other drug policy reforms, and in California
without Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opposed most pragmatic efforts to
reduce the state's prison population and vetoed numerous
harm-reduction bills. The overall state prison population declined
for the first time in thirty-eight years in 2009, a result in good
part of an emerging bipartisan consensus that nearly bankrupt state
governments can no longer afford to keep locking up ever more people,
especially for nonviolent drug offenses.

The greatest challenge today is one that was best articulated a
couple of years ago by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and
Democracy, co-chaired by former presidents Cardoso of Brazil, Gaviria
of Colombia and Zedillo of Mexico. It is to "break the taboo" on
vigorous, honest and open debate about all drug policy options,
including harm reduction, decriminalization and legalization. That's
what drug war advocates most fear--because they know the policies
they advocate ultimately are indefensible on grounds of science,
compassion, health or human rights. Breaking taboos requires courage,
but it is an essential step on the path to broader drug policy reform.