| WOL: You've got this
three-part strategy for hemp that includes support for medical marijuana
and even social use. Some hemp activists say they want no part of
marijuana law reform and that the association between the two is the bane
of their project.
Conrad: When I first
got involved, I thought the hemp issue would be an easy winner. All
we would have to do is explain to the government that it doesn't get you
high, it's been used for 10,000 years, Congress didn't mean to prohibit
hemp, that it was a mistake. What I found was quite to the contrary.
Not only do I believe the federal government will block hemp until we get
marijuana legalized, but in fact the whole alternative being proposed by
those who want to separate the issues could lead to some negative consequences.
First, let me say that I
don't fault that point of view. Hemp and marijuana are not the same.
I think the federal government is using marijuana as a subterfuge to suppress
hemp, and that if we followed their standards it's possible that we could
have hemp surrounded by 10-foot high electrified fences with razor wire,
flood lights, and armed guards, and we could grow all the hemp we wanted
that way, but we would still be growing hemp in a fascist state.
I don't want to grow hemp in a fascist state, I want to live in a society
envisioned by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two of our most famous
hemp farmers, where liberty and human dignity are the cornerstones of our
democracy. And if you try to pursue this by negotiating with the
DEA you're going to end up growing it in a prison-like atmosphere.
WOL: Regarding California
Proposition 36, which would divert nonviolent drug possession offenders
from prison into treatment, some activists are complaining that while it
is an improvement to keep people out of prison, we are still subjecting
people to state control. Also, they say what about marijuana smokers,
are they going to get sent to treatment for smoking a joint? I see
that you're wearing a Prop. 36 button, so I assume you are supporting it.
Conrad: When I first
heard about Prop. 36, I was initially concerned that as a person who knows
a lot of people who smoke marijuana and who has smoked it myself, I don't
want to be rehabbed and I don't think any of my friends need it either.
Then I found out that marijuana isn't mentioned at all. I do think
it was a good strategy because first, some hard drug addicts, especially
those who have problems with the law, do need some help. I believe
in treatment on demand anyway, so sending people to treatment instead of
prison seems like a good thing. But Prop. 36 will have no effect
on marijuana smokers. The state of California has passed a medical
marijuana initiative, and I think California would pass an "age of consent"
for marijuana if it were to be presented and articulated properly.
That implies some political
courage; this initiative was not written from a point of view of political
courage. This initiative was written from the point of view of focus
groups and what they thought they could get the voters to go for.
I think that's a bad way to write laws. If Prop. 215 had been written
by focus groups instead of patients and doctors, then we would not have
as good as a law. Many people in California would have accepted a
legal age of consent measure. But the people who are running this
campaign weren't sure of that, so instead we have triangulation.
Part of the strategy here is to say, "if we're going to treat the hard
drug users more humanely, then why are we still sending pot smokers to
jail?" I think it's going to cause a state of affairs where the marijuana
issue is going to be dealt with more humanely.
WOL: Are you suggesting
that we could see a successful vote in the California legislature or on
an initiative in the next few years?
Conrad: There is a
good chance that we could end up with some legislation coming through,
but I think Gov. Davis, with his spineless, pro-prison stance, would veto
it. If, on the other hand, the alternative is to have focus groups
writing marijuana law, I don't think I'm going to like that too much either.
What I'm hoping for is that something similar to Alaska's Proposition 5
can be brought down and get some money behind it. Prop. 5 is a full
regulation of cannabis measure, addressing industrial hemp, medical use,
and sets an age of consent at age 18. It doesn't allow for sales,
but neither does it provide criminal penalties for sales. The state
legislature would then have a choice: It could write reasonable regulations
or it could do nothing, but it could not recriminalize it.
WOL: Are we reaching
the point where the only people who can pull off these initiatives are
precisely these folks who are using the focus groups, doing the triangulation
strategy, and coming up with these politically palatable measure that may
not be in the best interests of marijuana consumers?
Conrad: Yes, I'm afraid
that this movement is caught up in the same political system as everything
else. Trying to get a good presidential candidate is not easy, and
neither is trying to get a good initiative on the ballot. There's
a group of people who are very good at what they do, and they're very well
paid for doing that and they're not interested in seeing that money go
to grass roots activists, who could probably put together better language
than we get from these focus groups. They understand that their ability
to pass these initiatives is directly related to the educational work done
by these grass roots activists, but that doesn't mean they want to involve
these activists or use their experience and knowledge in drafting these
measures. They're interested in how the average ignorant person who
knows nothing about it might respond.
WOL: Some activists
have also criticized medical marijuana measures written by Americans for
Medical Rights that set tight limits on the amount of marijuana patients
can possess. They say these measures are coming back to bite them
here in California because prosecutors point to these low limits and claim
that patient X or patient Y has too much for medical purposes.
Conrad: The California
law does not put a limit on what conditions are covered, how much marijuana
a patient can have or grow. Why is that? We didn't want to
limit it to a list of conditions because we don't know what all those conditions
are. The reason that no amount of marijuana is specified in Prop.
215 is that some patients will need a large amount of marijuana.
The federal government provides its eight patients with six to eight pounds
per year. But patients growing using the most efficient technique,
the "sea of green," will have a large number of small plants, well beyond
the limits set in other states. In Oregon, Arizona, Alaska, Washington,
Nevada, those AMR-written initiatives limit the amount patients can have
and require them to go before a board. That's an unfair restriction
to the integrity of both the patient and the doctor.
When they say patients can
only have two ounces, I think that's unfair as well. Or, if you can
only have three plants growing, well, you can't get enough marijuana out
of that to get the six to eight pounds. Most people are growing sea
of green and you're saying they can't grow the most practical way, they
can't have the amount they need, they can't use it in the safest possible
way, they can't use it for all the conditions they need it for, and if
they have enough to get by on they're going to get arrested. Why?
Because the focus groups said that sounded reasonable to them. But
it doesn't sound reasonable to the patients or the doctors or the caregivers
or anyone who's done the research. This I why I think there is a
serious and fundamental problem. They're doing it to send a message,
but Prop. 215 was not to send a message, Prop. 215 was to keep patients
out of prison.
WOL: You said that
in some ways, we are worse off in the wake of Prop. 215. What do
you mean?
Conrad: We're not in
a worse position in terms of legality and the protection of patients.
In fact, we just had a hung jury in the case of a patient growing 370 plants,
we've had acquittals of patients growing 240, 89, 131 plants. Where
we are worse off is as a movement. Before Prop. 215 we were unified.
We had an educational program based on the three points of BACH and we
were all moving along together, we all saw that every advance helped all
of us. But 215 created this big division between people who were
for medical, people who were for industrial hemp, and people who were for
the whole ball of wax. So the divisions and bitterness that came
up as a result of that has still not healed in this state. One thing
we did wrong was that we didn't go into the campaign with a real understanding
of what happens after we win. We thought it was just kicking this
wave off across the country; we didn't realize the entrenchment, the political
and legal battles we would have to fight. We didn't realize how successful
the drug warriors would be in splitting the patients away from the rest
of the movement because their whole argument about the "legalizers hiding
behind patients" was not effective in convincing voters, but it was effective
in convincing some medical marijuana advocates to distance themselves from
the broader issues.
The same thing has happened
with the hemp issue, for example, with the North American Industrial Hemp
Council, which has a very strong prohibitionist stand on marijuana.
At the same time, the Hemp Industries Association has quite the opposite
position. I really urge any group that's going into this kind of
campaign to remember two things. First, you're going to end up with
divisiveness and infighting. You have to be ready to forgive.
There'll be plenty to forgive later on, so you better get used to it.
You have to realize that campaigns create pressures that change the way
people act. And second, you have to prepare for what comes after
election day. As you run through the campaign, you're totally fixated
on election day, but ultimately it's the other side of the election that
will determine what will happen. If we had had the resources to put
together a legal defense team for those first few patients that had the
problems, then we wouldn't be fighting as many cases as we are today.
WOL: Is the California
medical marijuana battle going to have to be settled county by county?
Conrad: Well, I'm not
expecting any huge battles in Alameda County or San Francisco County, but
otherwise yes. It's trench warfare now. My position now is
that I get to come into court with the facts, with the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, and make sure that this patient comes
out with the right verdict. I can't guarantee that juries will do
the right thing, but I can provide expert testimony to help them do so.
WOL: Are we on the
verge of a sea change in drug policy?
Conrad: Well, look
at this Shadow Convention. The presence of people with the stature
of Tom Campbell, Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel, John Conyers -- you're
talking about some of the top leadership of the Democratic Party, and the
GOP, too, if Campbell gets elected. I think we're watching a quantum
shift right now. It's hard for people like ourselves because we're
impatient. But I have to say that when I got involved in this in
1989, no one even knew what hemp was. Today I don't even have to
explain the term. Same with medical marijuana. Now, by educating
ourselves and then others, we're at a point where 20% of the population
lives in states with medical marijuana laws, not because of the politicians,
but because of the voters. I think that the age of consent argument
is something that will resonate, if our side has the courage to adopt that.
Our side has this built in reluctance to confront certain issues, to talk
around them.
More than anything else,
I think the whole argument has changed in the last ten years. The
fact that we have these Democratic officials coming up the street from
their convention because they know it needs to be talked about, this is
a good sign. The fact that Tom Campbell is running against Dianne
Feinstein, the fact that Republicans are coming out. What we're learning
is that this is not a partisan issue. Within 10 minutes of talking
to anyone, you can get them to agree with you, with a couple of important
exceptions.
WOL: And those would
be?
Conrad: Those who have
a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo. The other
group that we can't convince are those who are wallowing in their own hysteria,
and that would include people like Carroll O'Connor and Martin Sheen.
They've had problems with their children, and I totally sympathize and
understand why they are concerned. But that doesn't mean other people's
children should have to go to prison. There's a group that's so emotionally
scarred by their own experience that they're unable to step back and see
what is for the greater good of society.
WOL: What about the
people I would call puritans, the ones you referred to earlier as wanting
to punish people for doing something pleasurable?
Conrad: It depends.
If their puritanism is based in Christianity, then there is a profoundly
strong argument that they should back away from the drug war. Remember,
Jesus' first miracle was to create wine out of water, and not for a religious
sacrament but for a wedding celebration. In other words, he brought
the drugs to the party. Jesus said it was not what went into your
mouth that affects your soul, but that which comes out of it, so those
people who say "I should send other people to prison because I don't like
what they're doing," those are the people Jesus said faced greater damnation
because they are spewing out this hateful stuff. Jesus talked about
forgiveness, he didn't talk about incarceration. Jesus broke the
law in order to heal sick and dying people. If these people are coming
from Christianity, then they have no place to turn in the Bible and they
have to admit that what they're doing is wrong.
If they are simply sadistic
individuals who believe that pleasure is bad and people who need help should
be suffering, I think those people need some kind of psychological treatment.
Again, this leads to thinking about the post-reform era. We need
to prepare to create a national movement of reconciliation in which the
people who have been victimized by the drug war and those who perpetrated
the drug war have the opportunity to confront one another, not from malice
and hatred, but in terms of trying to rehumanize one another and to forgive
one another. |
