Marijuana Policy

Editor's Note: Shane G. Trejo is an intern at StoptheDrugWar.org. His bio is in our "staff" section.

It turns out that prohibition has found an effective way to make marijuana truly toxic. As seen in Germany where marijuana has been tainted with lead in order to increase its weight and increase profits an estimated $682 per pound:

One bag bought from a dealer even contained lead particles big enough to see, which meant the lead must have been added deliberately, rather than being absorbed into the plant from contaminated soil. … The authorities do not know where the tainted marijuana came from or why the lead was added, but the German police suspect that it was done to make money. The samples tested contained 10 percent lead by weight, which translates into an increased profit of about $682 per pound of marijuana.

Highly toxic wood alcohols found their way into much of the available bootleg liquor. When denatured industrial alcohol was not sufficiently diluted, or was consumed in large quantities, the result was paralysis, blindness and death. In 1927, almost twelve thousand deaths were attributed to alcohol poisonings, many of these among the urban poor who could not afford imported liquors. In 1930, U.S. public health officials estimated that fifteen thousand persons were afflicted with "jake foot," a debilitating paralysis of the hands and feet brought on by drinking denatured alcohol flavored with ginger root.

Editor's Note: Shane G. Trejo is an intern at StoptheDrugWar.org. His bio is in our "staff" section.

As touched upon in Friday’s edition of the Drug War Chronicle, United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to reclassify marijuana as a Class B drug. This would restore its pre-2004 classification and change the penalties of marijuana possession from an already draconian two year maximum sentence to five years:

Gordon Brown said: "I believe that if we're sending out a signal, particularly to teenagers – and particular those at the most vulnerable age, young teenagers – that in any way we find cannabis acceptable, given all we know about the way that cannabis is being sold in this country, that that is not the right thing to do. "There's a stronger case now for sending out a signal that cannabis is not only illegal, it's unacceptable."

The mental health charity Rethink said Mr. Brown should heed the committee's advice. The charity spokesman Paul Corry said: "Gordon Brown should put aside his personal views on cannabis and accept the fact that it does not make sense to reclassify. "Use of the drug has gone down since it was downgraded in 2004 and research by Rethink shows that only 3% of users would consider stopping on the grounds of illegality." … Steve Rolles, of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told the Today programme reclassification was not the most effective way to alert people to the dangers associated with cannabis. He said: "Class C is still illegal. No one is saying it's harmless. I don't think increasing the prison sentence from two years to five years for possession is necessarily the way to do it. I think if we want to send out messages to young people, rather than mass criminalisation of millions of young people, I think the way to do it would be in effective, targeted public health education."

And the Swiss may have succeeded in making heroin boring, the researchers suggested. "As the Swiss population supported this drug policy, this medicalization of opiate dependence changed the image of heroin use as a rebellious act to an illness that needs therapy," Drs. Nordt and Stohler wrote. "Finally," they add, "heroin seems to have become a 'loser drug,' with its attractiveness fading for young people."

"The Conservative party has a very clear view that it should be class B. People have had enough of reviews and the prime minister should stop dithering and get on and make a decision."

I am continuously shocked by the attitudes of people like these. Wouldn’t you want to wait for reviews and studies to happen before making a decision? This is a decision that will potentially put otherwise law-abiding citizens who happen to smoke pot in jail for up to five years. Wouldn’t you want to be as informed as possible before making a decision that could destroy lives and waste precious law enforcement dollars?

A disturbing trend amongst some politicians is the belief in state-enforced morality. This misguided belief keeps them from thinking rationally. Out of the issues he could possibly be worried about, PM Brown is worried about pot smokers? His moral grandstanding has made him seemingly oblivious to the fact that the result of marijuana reclassification will be potentially three more years in prison for a completely nonviolent personal act.

State-enforced morality is based on the faulty premise that the law needs to protect a societal purity. That is why that in spite of it being obvious that the war on drugs is a failure, it still continues to rage on. The message must be sent at any cost.

Supporters argued current law costs youths who experiment with the drug all chances at receiving financial aid to attend college. They said it wasn't fair to penalize them for life for a youthful mistake.

Windham Republican Jason Bedrick said he doesn't advocate using marijuana, but that wasn't the issue.

"The question is whether a teenager making a stupid decision should face a year in prison and loss of all funding for college," said Bedrick.

Bedrick called the state's penalties "overly harsh."

"What societal interest is served by giving them a record for life?" he said. Instead of harsh penalties, society should emphasize education, he said.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Marijuana is now the biggest source of income for Mexico's drug cartels and the U.S. is committed to cracking down harder on traffickers, U.S. drug czar John Walters said Thursday.

"We're trying to increase the force with which we're attacking this problem," Walters said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This is a focus because of the overlooked importance marijuana has in the violence."

He added that the U.S. is "looking at additional ways in which we can have a stronger prosecutorial response," including requests for more funding and personnel.

Although acute cannabis intoxication following smoking has been shown to mildly impair psychomotor skills, this impairment is seldom severe or long lasting. In closed course and driving simulator studies, marijuana’s acute effects on psychomotor performance include minor impairments in tracking (eye movement control) and reaction time, as well as variation in lateral positioning, headway (drivers under the influence of cannabis tend to follow less closely to the vehicle in front of them), and speed (drivers tend to decrease speed following cannabis inhalation). In general, these variations in driving behavior are noticeably less consistent or pronounced than the impairments exhibited by subjects under the influence of alcohol. Also, unlike subjects impaired by alcohol, individuals under the influence of cannabis tend to be aware of their impairment and try to compensate for it accordingly, either by driving more cautiously or by expressing an unwillingness to drive altogether. [see original for citations]

It’ll come as a surprise to most, but Republicans try marijuana at a higher rate than Democrats. A Gallup poll found that 33% of Republicans have tried America’s favorite (and safest) illicit drug while a slightly lower 31% of Democrats have inhaled the celebrated herb.

Thinking back, I remember when it was learned that House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and other Republicans had enjoyed marijuana in their pasts, and I recall the 2002 Republican congressional page scandal in which eleven pot smoker pages sponsored by Republican House members were dismissed subsequent to the discovery of marijuana in their Capitol Hill dormitory. I guess I should have put two and two together.

Politically speaking, the obvious question is “Why doesn’t this translate into more Republican support for marijuana decriminalization or legalization?” Only 21% of Republicans want the herb legalized while 37% of Democrats do. Do Republicans experience different effects? Do they feel guilty after imbibing?

Maybe we just need more Republicans to bring their views on marijuana laws out of the closet. Take Gary Johnson for instance. The former Republican governor of New Mexico supported the legalization of marijuana in a very public way when he was in office, in fact, he was eager to make it part of his legacy. He also wanted people to understand that he didn’t just “experiment” with the weed: “In running for office during my first term, I offered up the fact that I smoked marijuana. And the media was very quick to say, ‘Oh, so you experimented with marijuana’…No, I smoked marijuana. This is something that I did. I did it along with a lot of other people. But me and my buddies, you know…we enjoyed what we were doing,” said Johnson in 1999.

Of course, there’s another high-profile Republican not shying away from telling people marijuana should be legal -- Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX) who has served in Congress for almost 20 years. And, heck, he just recently set the GOP’s one-day fundraising record of $4.3 million. Hmmm, it sure doesn’t seem like his supporters are afraid of his marijuana legalization spiel.

George Shultz, former Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, also wants marijuana legalized. Almost 20 years ago, he coined an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to tell people “...We need at least to consider and examine forms of controlled legalization of drugs.”

Another of Reagan’s most trusted aides, Lyn Nofziger, who also worked for Nixon and shares responsibility for unleashing the Reagan drug war on America, joined Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) at a 2002 Capitol Hill press conference to support a federal medical marijuana bill and to push President Bush and other Republicans to get onboard. “I've become an advocate of medical marijuana…It is truly compassionate. I sincerely hope the administration can get behind this bill,” he said.

And then there are some of the Republican Party’s luminaries. Highly respected and influential ultra-conservatives like William F. Buckley, Jr. and Milton Friedman have called for marijuana legalization at least since Nixon famously visited Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai in 1972. I suppose the appropriate question is “When will the Republicans decide to take the high road to China on this one?”

Note: It is interesting and important to realize that all of the conservatives whose viewpoints on drug policy were discussed above, save Nofziger, go much further than only wanting marijuana to be legal. In fact, they have either explicitly called for all drugs to be legalized or have strongly alluded to the idea they should be.

In the section, "Predictive Estimates," the report concludes:
• Increased cannabis cultivation may result in reduced marijuana prices.
The recent increases in cannabis cultivation and marijuana production within the United States coincide with the continued flow of marijuana from foreign sources, which may lead to market saturation [in] major markets. This saturation could reduce the price of the drug significantly. [CelebStoner.com]

Americans with some college education -- from those who have attended at least one college course to those who have postgraduate degrees -- are somewhat more likely than those without a college degree to say marijuana should be legal in the country. Thirty-seven percent of adults with a college education support legalization, compared with 31% of those with no college education.