IN SEARCH OF REEFER UNMADNESS

Among the people deserving sympathy these days are the lawmakers
tangled in the issue of marijuana law, medical or otherwise.

On one hand we have the federal policy, which considers marijuana a
controlled substance and doesn't distinguish between it and other
controlled substances like heroin and cocaine.

On the other hand we had in our state Legislature a bill to establish
and regulate marijuana dispensaries. Not wanting to challenge the
feds, the governor vetoed it, so those pushing for legitimate use of
medical marijuana are now looking at a provision for collective gardens.

According to a front-page story on last Sunday's Kitsap Sun, a new
state law allows up to 10 authorized patients to raise up to 45
cannabis plants in a single location, but no individual can own more
than 15.

You may wonder how anyone can prove which plants are whose. And
without that kind of proof, what stops a licensed grower from planting
in multiple plots. So no wonder city and county officials are avoiding
the issue by enacting moratoria. Mason County, Kitsap County, Port
Orchard, Bremerton, and Poulsbo have each established a moratorium or
anticipate one in the future.

Elsewhere around Puget Sound, Kirkland, Everett, Federal Way, and
Tacoma have all declared moratoria of various kinds. But Gig Harbor
allows collective gardens in an undeveloped business district, and
Seattle doesn't distinguish between marijuana shops and any other
kinds of shops.

This kind of confusion and inconsistency is a sign of the early stage
of social change. When I was a kid too many decades ago, my
contemporaries and I had all heard of a film called "Reefer Madness."
Even though we'd never seen it, it was widely known among us that
marijuana would certainly lead to blindness or a life of rape and
murder, a life that would end inevitably lead to suicide or some other
violent death. We knew this as certainly as we knew that smoking would
stunt our growth and that autoerotism would cause hair to grow on our
palms.

What we didn't know was that the 1936 film, originally entitled "Tell
Your Children," was produced by a church group using cheesy propaganda
to terrify the young into upright behavior, as staunch moralizers have
always done.

The film was sold, retitled "Reefer Madness," and redistributed on the
exploitation film circuit, but the story was the same: pushers lure
high school students into trying marijuana, and what follows is a
hit-and-run accident, manslaughter, suicide, rape, and madness.

After deservedly lingering in obscurity for decades, the film
resurfaced in the far-less-conservative 1970s, when the young were
savvier and less susceptible to fright tactics. Advocates of marijuana
reform laws saw the film as mere camp, an unintentional comedy.

At the time of my childhood no reasonable person would have imagined
that cannabis would have been approved for legitimate use as an
analgesic, considering the successful propaganda in "Reefer Madness"
and the imposing, implacable conservatism of the American Medical
Association and its disapproval of treatments outside its narrow range
of experience.

Our strange thinking on this issue is revealed by the Gig Harbor
police chief, who said he didn't want elementary schoolchildren to
have to walk past a marijuana garden, apparently forgetting that
children can walk past a beer garden at Silverdale's Whaling Days, sit
next to beer-drinkers at a Mariners' game, and watch their parents
drink alcohol at home.

But as we've seen in many more momentous social and cultural
developments in the past, demand for change works from the bottom up,
and when the demand is broad enough, our elected leaders get in line
and follow the evolving public opinion.

No sound policy can be based on fictitious narratives of the kind seen
in "Reefer Madness." As lawmakers fumble through this issue of
marijuana in our society, we should hope they see through myths and
propaganda to examine this: Would legalized marijuana cause anywhere
near the mayhem already caused by alcohol? And would its health
consequences be anywhere near as serious as those caused by tobacco
and the ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup?

However local lawmakers resolve the tension between the implacability
of the federal government and the push from ground level to relax the
laws governing marijuana, change will come. But just as it took
generations for the public to admit that homosexuality is neither
contagious nor extinguishable, it could take generations for the myths
about marijuana to gradually drift away.