POT POSSESSION BILL UP IN SMOKE

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma House of Representatives overwhelmingly
defeated a plan Monday to reduce the penalties for possessing small amounts
of marijuana.

Rep. Bill Nations is the House author of a bill designed to make possessing
less than one ounce of marijuana a misdemeanor. Currently, simple
possession of any amount of marijuana can be charged as either a felony or
a misdemeanor.

Nations, D-Norman, said police officers and court systems across the state
are getting bogged down dealing with minor drug offenses, like marijuana
possession.

"I've had highway patrol officers and police officers who say that to
arrest someone for possessing a joint takes them off the street for four
hours, and they do that a lot.

"There's also a growing court burden to deal with these offenses," Nations
said. "We were trying to find a way to relieve both the courts and the
police officers, while maintaining a penalty that would have consequences
that were significant enough to deter the use of marijuana."

Although Nations' measure -- Senate Bill 779 -- was only a "shell" bill
that contained no substantive language, House members still rejected it on
a 84-13 vote.

Rep. Greg Piatt, who opposed the bill, argued reducing the penalties would
send a message to children that it was OK to smoke marijuana.

"Moving this from a felony to a misdemeanor changes the message that we
send to our children about the severity of drug usage, wouldn't you agree?"
asked Piatt, R-Ardmore.

Nations said that was not the intent of the bill and he hoped to get the
measure to a conference committee so a workable solution could be reached.

"Under no circumstances did we want anything we did to be construed,
especially by young people, as condoning the use of marijuana," Nations
said. "We were trying to work on what sort of punishment we could give that
would still be significant and still be a deterrent, but would not take
police off the street for three or four hours and would not overburden the
court system."

Mark Woodward, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs, said officials there also were concerned about the message
such a proposal would send to young people. While he admitted narcotics
officers don't spend much time arresting pot smokers, he said smoking
marijuana typically leads to the use of more dangerous narcotics.

"No doubt about it -- marijuana is a gateway drug," Woodward said. "Nobody
wakes up one day and says, 'Hey, I think I'll stick some heroin in my arm.'

"When I get the opportunity to ask someone who is going to prison or to
drug treatment about the first illegal drug they used -- the answer is
almost always marijuana."

Woodward said the potency of marijuana has also increased tremendously in
recent years. While the marijuana from the 1960s typically contained 1-2
percent of the active ingredient THC, Woodward said today that number
ranges from the upper teens to the low 20s.

"Growing operations have become much more sophisticated with the use of
hydroponics and the cloning of plants," Woodward said. "As a result the
potency of marijuana is different now than it was just five years ago, and
it's going to be that much stronger five years from now."

According to the Oklahoma Sentencing Commission Report on Felony Sentencing
for 2001, 1,400 -- or 20 percent -- of the 7,324 offenders sent to prison
in 2001 were sentenced for drug possession.

The 15-member commission, composed of judges, legislators, prosecutors,
defenders, crime victims and the police, recently released a series of
recommendations designed to ease the demands of the prison system. Among
the recommendations was making possession of less than one ounce of
marijuana a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

The panel also suggested eliminating the mandatory minimum prison sentence
for felony drug possession, which is currently two years for the first
offense and four years for subsequent offenses.

Nations, who indicated the measure is likely dead for this session, said
voting in favor of reducing the penalties for drug crimes is a politically
unpopular vote that political opponents can use against members as a
"soft-on-crime" vote.

"Let's face it, politically it's a difficult vote to cast," Nations
admitted. "The vote was actually closer than what went on the board today,
but when it was apparent it wasn't going to pass, then everybody made the
easy political vote."