REEFER MADNESS

Advocates, Detractors Keep Fighting Over Criminality, Harsh Penalties

Mark Braunstein smokes pot, and everybody knows it. Friends. Co-workers.
Even the local police. He'll tell anyone who asks that he gets high every
few days. It used to be daily, but now he says he needs fewer tokes to
quell the painful muscle spasms he's weathered since a 1990 spinal cord injury.

Armed with a prescription from a Dutch physician, Braunstein, a vegan who
has long shunned pharmaceuticals, "came out" as a medicinal user of
marijuana seven years ago. As a paraplegic, he felt completely free to talk
about the drug that, before his car accident, he had used more for its
mind-altering effects.

"Speaking for myself, I really feel that once you legalize it medicinally,
the next step is to legalize it recreationally," said the 51-year-old
Connecticut College librarian. "I'm just doing my part to get the process
going."

With his twin missions for the future of marijuana, Braunstein straddles
the crooked line defining cannabis sativa's place in American culture.

The Connecticut House of Representatives recently navigated the same line
in deciding whether the state should grant patients the freedom to use a
drug that the federal government forbids them. The bill, which would have
allowed patients to grow three plants for personal use with a doctor's
consent, was snuffed out Wednesday. But the debate lasted 21/2 hours, a
testament to how deep the weed has sunk its roots into our social fabric.

Advocates say it's been used medicinally for millenniums, but marijuana has
become better known as America's illicit drug of choice - 37 percent of
people over age 12 have tried it, the government says.

For a favorite of the underground, pot sure has a high profile.

Last week, Tommy Chong, 64, patron saint of potheads, pleaded guilty after
getting caught in a February federal roundup of bong and pipe sellers. And
in his first interview since his possession bust a few months ago, Ben
Curtis, the "Dell Dude," said he did more than play a stoner on TV.

On Thursday, Maryland's governor resisted pressure from his own Republican
Party, signing a bill to relax punishment for medicinal users of pot. Eight
other states have similar laws in place.

Other news comes from north of the border, as the Canadian government, to
the Bush administration's dismay, moves steadily toward decriminalization.
Ottawa says it wants to unclog the nation's courts by giving tickets to
people caught with less than 15 grams of pot.

Contrast that to the United States, where more people are behind bars for
marijuana violations than at any other time in American history. Meanwhile,
pot smolders openly throughout popular culture. Today, dope is as much a
musical totem in hip-hop as it ever was in hippie rock.

"It has all this symbolic meaning attached to it by the people who smoke it
and by the people who want to prevent people from smoking it," said Eric
Schlosser, author of "Fast Food Nation." He tackles pot in his new book,
"Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market"
(Houghton Mifflin, $23).

Marijuana unites "a powerful subculture, and the subculture and the
anti-culture feed off one another," he said, referring to the propaganda
wars that started in the 1930s with the release of the film that gave his
book its title.

"Some of the early prevention efforts had an overreactive tone to them.
They weren't based in research. Today, we have a much clearer understanding
of the implications of marijuana and how it can adversely affect ...
perception, behavior, functioning and fetal development," said Wayne
Dailey, spokesman for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction
Services.

Moving beyond the Reagan-era "Just Say No" campaign, recent commercials
have tied weed to international terrorism and a potentially fatal mental
impairment when guns or vehicles get involved.

"I don't think [marijuana is] a moral issue. Of course, it is to some
people. But my own belief is that it's much more critically an issue of
health," said Sue Rusche, head of the Georgia-based National Families in
Action. Like many on her side, Rusche sees the rally behind medical
marijuana as the latest form of pro-pot propaganda, a smoke screen for the
real goal of legitimizing recreational use.

What's certain is that marijuana is a cultural Hydra that grows
controversies. Everything about it fuels dispute, from its industrial
potential as hemp to its importance in the drug war.

For example, many frame marijuana in terms of the collateral damage from
stiff drug sentences. "What about the people who are taken out of the black
and Latino community? It has put those populations in a de-evolutionary
state," said Cliff Thornton, whose organization, Efficacy, advocates
changes in drug policy.

The best grounds for reconsidering the nation's relationship with pot is
the hidden population of users who defy the stereotype of the spacey,
shiftless stoner, said Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at Reason magazine.

In his new book, "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use," Sullum writes,
"People who use drugs in a controlled, inconspicuous way are not inclined
to stand up and announce the fact. Prohibition renders them invisible,
because they fear the legal, social, and economic consequences of speaking up."

Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington,
makes the comparison to another once-hidden culture. "It's almost parallel
to the gay community 30 years ago," when being outed could cost someone his
job and his place in society.

So, if pot smokers are everywhere, as the advocates claim, what do they
look like? Where can they be found?

Try Smoke 'N' Leather, a 20-year-old head shop in downtown Enfield. Besides
motorcycle jackets and samurai swords, the store sells pipes, scales and
water bongs, from cheap plastic contraptions to twisted towers of colored
glass that cost up to $2,500 - all intended for tobacco, of course.

Standing among the paraphernalia, Joe DiFranco fits in. "Most everyone I
know smokes trees. But over the years, I've cut people off for graduating"
to harder drugs like crack or heroin. Wearing a blue tank top that reveals
the tattoos on his pale arms, DiFranco, 24, shifted from foot to foot. He
says weed calms his hyperactivity better than the prescribed pills that
made him "a raving lunatic." He's been "self-medicating" since the seventh
grade, he says.

The answer might be different in malls, grocery stores or churches, but an
informal survey of some Hartford taverngoers revealed that most had at
least tried pot. The majority of them, however, stopped smoking it sometime
after high school.

"I just got bored with it," said Paul, 27. "I don't want to sit at home
stoned on the couch. Alcohol's more social," he said, hoisting a pint glass.

Hailing from a different generation, David and John both smoked just once
while in college in the early 1960s. Neither cared for it. Over $75 worth
of dinner and drinks at Trumbull Kitchen, they discussed the drug in the
context of the decade it will forever be associated with.

From that time, David recalled a party where he noticed the room divided.
As his group sipped drinks on one side, slightly younger students passed
joints on the other - a generation gap in the flesh.