As Will mentioned below, Hempfest is this weekend. I’m sure most of you have noticed how much importance I place on the issue of drug policy, and as you’d expect, I’ll be spending much of the weekend down in Myrtle Edwards Park in the hemposium tent listening to speakers. I’m often told that by trying very openly and aggressively to bring about an end to drug prohibition, I’m fighting what will always be a losing battle. I very strongly disagree with that. At some point, it will simply become fiscally impossible for this country to sustain its massive prison system and its constantly growing international anti-drug expenditures and we will be forced to move in the other direction. I think it’s vital that we start to envision what the correct regulatory mechanisms should look like when that time comes.
It’s somewhat disheartening to remember that we could only end alcohol prohibition after the Great Depression actually hit and pragmatic public policy was the only way forward. Hopefully, the battle can be won before we hit some kind of financial armageddon. What makes me optimistic is that the numbers of those speaking up about the damage being done by the drug war is growing – and coming from more and more unexpected places. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is an organization, founded in 2002, of current and former law enforcement officials that now has over 5000 members, including former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper. The King County Bar Association commissioned a Drug Policy Project, led by now-State Representative Roger Goodman, that produced a well-researched report calling for an end to drug prohibition and a transition to having government regulate and control currently illegal drugs, instead of simply handing their distribution to criminal gangs who bring violence to our cities to protect their profits. Countries like Switzerland, Portugal, Australia, Canada, Holland, and even Russia, have taken steps to decriminalize drug use.
Recently, the UK drug law reform organization Transform released an impressive document for drug law reformers called Tools for the Debate. It’s like a play book for anyone who wants to be successful in breaking down the rhetoric and the propaganda that has kept this massively unsuccessful public policy afloat for so long. One of the major stumbling blocks to getting the message out is described here in the report:
In this political arena a virulent disease known as ‘Green Room Syndrome’ is epidemic, where strongly held beliefs on reform disappear as soon as the record button is pressed for broadcast. This is something we have experienced again and again: fellow-debaters who privately admit to agreeing with us in the Green Room before a media interview, only to feign shock and outrage at our position once the cameras and microphones are on. There are many in politics and public life who understand intellectually that the prohibition of drugs is unsustainable, but who default in public to moral grandstanding and emotive appeals to the safety of their children.
(You can see a video of Bill O’Reilly getting caught in this hypocrisy by a 16-year-old high school student who starts reading from O’Reilly’s own book)
There’s more optimism today in this area than there’s been for as long as I’ve followed this issue. All of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls (and Ron Paul) support stopping the federal crackdown on medical marijuana in the states that have made it legal. California has been the epicenter of this battle for years. Having the federal government back off is likely to be the first step towards letting states come up with a more sensible policy dealing with both marijuana and more dangerous illegal drugs. And hell, it might even happen sooner:
August 6 — A coalition of California marijuana growers and dealers has offered Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger one billion dollars to solve the current state budget crisis. The group, calling itself Let Us Pay Taxes, makes the offer through its web site LetUsPayTaxes.com. The offer comes at a time when the California legislature is deadlocked on a new budget and California has stopped issuing checks for vitally needed social services. Legislators are currently arguing over which programs will be cut in order to balance the budget.
“It is ridiculous that California can’t pay its bills,” said spokesman Clifford Schaffer. “It is a tragedy that they will cut badly needed services and programs such as medical care for the elderly and prison drug treatment when the money to fund all these programs and more is there and available. Everyone who is currently waiting for a check from the state should be enraged at this foolishness.”
Regulation and taxation of marijuana could produce six billion dollars in additional tax revenue, according to economic studies linked from LetUsPayTaxes.com. In addition, it could save up to ten billion dollars in enforcement costs. “That is a conservative estimate,” said Schaffer. “By other estimates, the revenues could be five times that. The economists are with us all the way on this one. Marijuana prohibition is an economic disaster.”
There’s no shortage of negative stereotypes when it comes to those who flock to Myrtle Edwards Park every year. A generation of Americans has grown up dismissing the movement to reform our drug laws as a fringe cause led by a bunch of idealistic hippies. But when you get past the stoner stereotypes, the larger cause we’ve been fighting for isn’t just right, it’s becoming necessary to start addressing a number of glaring problems in our society today.
The King County Bar Association has long supported decriminalizing drug use and taking a treatment approach to the problem.
Who needs “treatment” for medical marijuna, or pot in general?
@1
Yeah, they have been at the forefront of this thing. The report they put out was an impressive document.
Lee,
So according to LetUsPayTaxes.com, California could stand to benefit financially upwards of $16 billion dollars in new revenue and cost savings in law enforcement.
Sounds like a no brainer, win-win to me.
You’d think the conservatives would be up for that. Not only do pot heads lower their overall tax burden, you KNOW the federal goverment will be all OVER the Mexican border if smuggling drugs into America was going dip into the Fed’s cut of the action.
@2
Who needs “treatment” for medical marijuna, or pot in general?
If you’re referring the article on California, they’re talking mostly about treatment for chemically addictive drugs like heroin and meth. California’s current drug treatment system (the voter-approved Prop 36) mandates drug treatment over prison, but Gov. Shrivelednutsax has been trying to get rid of it.
Marijuana is not a chemically addictive drug, although people can become psychologically dependent on it. In that sense, as an addiction, it’s more like being addicted to gambling than it is to being hooked on crack or heroin.
@4
You’d think the conservatives would be up for that. Not only do pot heads lower their overall tax burden, you KNOW the federal goverment will be all OVER the Mexican border if smuggling drugs into America was going dip into the Fed’s cut of the action.
A lot of smart and principled conservatives are certainly up for it. And if you can buy pot from the liquor store, the money isn’t going to MS-13 or the Sinaloa Cartel. I’ve said it before, dealing with the immigration problem starts with ending the drug war. Without doing that, nothing else has a chance of working.
ALERT THE MEDIA!!
I agree with Roger, Lee & GSB on this one, and I even agree with the actions of the King County Bar Association’s supporting decriminalization.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Surely with all these unusual events happening, I’m destined to hit the Mego-Millions tonight!! I think it’s up to $148,000,000 now.
@2 Hey GBS, let’s light up a toke and watch the tape of “Reefer Madness” again!
@7 Hey Lib, let’s light up a toke and watch the Megamillions drawing together!
@ 8:
Man I am so there. Of all the places I’ve been lit, a rabbit’s burrow isn’t on my list.
Your vaporizer or mine??? I’ll bring the homegrown.
Libertarian @ 7:
See, this is exactly what Al Gore is talking about in his book “The Assault on Reason.”
It shouldn’t be so shocking that the media needs to be altered just because people with political differences agree on something. When Americans discuss the facts and merits of any problem we can find common ground that best serves the interest of the American people.
As long as we leave the wild eyed, unprincipled, unscientific, ideological motivations out of the debate, that is. Like a Chi-Squared analysis to disprove Global Warming. Although the facts and the scientific community of peer reviewed studies prove MTR to be wrong – again.
lee
This is an issue where i support you 100%.
I could care a rats patooty if the govmint just said, “we don’t like this stuff because Jesus appeared to Bush in a dream so we are gonna make a federal case of it.” At least the integrity of science would not be undermined. That would be no worse then the prohibitions against saving live by using some DNA from a useless cell ball.
All else aside, when science is misused by govermint this way, it hurts our ability to advise the public. Kids raised on MJ psuedoscience and creationism are not likely to be able to deal with global warming, stem cell biology, cloning, engineered foods, etc. etc. I am embarrassed to say that the scientific community has been wimpy on this issue.
I am too busy to get down there this weekend, but I would be interested in any materials you collect in re the scientific issues.
I also feel strongly .. as a result of meeting you .. that the criminilization issue for MJ is all too real. If arresting folks for something this harmless ends up by criminalizing them, what good can come of it.
Gad if this keep up I might lose 100#, grow a mustache and become obsessed with obscure arial views!
Some of us have tried to do something about this in Washington, such as demanding that Congress back down on medical marijuana and let states decide for themselves (see HJM 4028 from 2005) and forcing a performance audit of state drug control policy as a follow-up to the King County Bar Association report (see HB 3171 from 2006). I was able to get a couple of Republican co-sponsors on HB 3171 (Jarrett, Tom), but none on 4028. The companion to 4028, SJM 8028, passed the Senate Health Care committee but died in Rules. HB 3171 passed the House Health Care committee (it pays to get the committee chair as the first co-sponsor!) but died in Appropriations. The leadership on both sides of the aisle are so afraid of being labeled as “soft on drugs” that they’re unwilling to undertake even common-sense baby steps. Very frustrating.
But then again, maybe their fears are justified, since if you look at the list of sponsors of both HJM 4028 and HB 3171, I’m the only one who is no longer in office. Hmmmm.
@10 Actually, my burrow is quite well furnished as befits a stock market capitalist.
@11 The day is coming — it’s already here — that global warming deniers will be no more respectable than Holocaust deniers.
So here’s one to rouse our trolls. I blame it on Reagan.
[Deleted – off topic]
the planet will get about 400 pounds of CO2 courtesy of MTR.
and the horse you rode in on.
[Deleted – off topic]
OK a little more info.
In the 1970’s, when there was still such a thing as a liberal Republican, Nelson Rockefeller had aspirations for the presidential nomination. Ronnie was also making his resurgence Rocky had one BIG problem. He was divorced. In order to prove his Republican, tough on crime, credentials, he drastically increased the penalties for marijuana. As a college student at that time I was somewhat familiar with the market. There was no perceivable impact on supply, but prices and potency jumped. I recall a move from ~$15 to 45 per ounce.
ANd to answer the trolls, I have no current market data. That was a long time age.
[Deleted – off topic]
[Deleted – off topic]
Mark The Redneck, You have got to be a liberal posin’. At some point your fellow rednecks would have shot you for making them look bad otherwise.
MTR. the adolescent feces thrower, thinks he can make us believe he owns a car.
Fat chance.
“There’s no shortage of negative stereotypes when it comes to those who flock to Myrtle Edwards Park every year.”
There are no negative stereotypes. Hippies really are brainless cretins – it’s not a stereotype.
Yeah, TL, you say it so it must be so.
Do you even know the definition of the word “stereotype”?
If we legalize drugs, only dopes will have pot…
Dope doesn’t kill, people do.
Drugs, dope, and…..
You’ll only get this roach by taking it out of my cold dead hand….
Protect your rights. Turn on a conservative.
If I had a nickel for every dope……
Those who trade their dope for security wind up as snitches…
Get the dope out of the UN
Hey. This PR stuff is hard.
MTR=dope. Discuss.
22, MTR, $800,000 will only be a down payment for the expenses McDermott will rack up before he’s through losing his final Supreme Court challenge
There’s no shortage of negative stereotypes when it comes to those who flock to Myrtle Edwards Park every year.
One look at the maggot infested long haired losers walking in and out of Myrtle Edwards Park and it becomes obvious why.
A generation of Americans has grown up dismissing the movement to reform our drug laws as a fringe cause led by a bunch of idealistic hippies.
You mean they are not a fringe bunch of hippies? LOL!!!!!
But when you get past the stoner stereotypes, the larger cause we’ve been fighting for isn’t just right, it’s becoming necessary to start addressing a number of glaring problems in our society today.
Glaring problems……like where to find killer bud without having to worry about getting busted by the cops.
Wingnuts get so caught up in the rhetoric, they can’t see the forest for the trees. Instead, Wingnuts would prefer to see child sex predators happily roaming the streets & looking for adventure, because we sure can’t afford to have their parole officers monitor them. I’m 56 yrs old myself, a child of the 70’s. How many people of that time can honestly say that they didn’t try out some mari-jane? Truthfully? Never got hooked on it or drove after using, myself, but sure had some great times.
“Don’t bogart that joint my friend, Pass it over to me”
About a decade ago, my Landlord at the time (I couldn’t believe he was actually listening to Rush Limpdick upstairs, no wonder his dog kept crying EVERY dang nite he would leave it at home with the radio playing!). Seemed to be an intelligent man, college educated from UW, his girlfriend also a UW graduate.
Anyway, we got into this discussion and he told me that the Medical Marijuana was a BAD thing, that it didn’t work on sick people, and was just a way for druggies to get around the law. HUHHHHH? I told him that I Remembered from my younger years (yeah, I was young once, around 105 lbs, 5’3″) almost tackling this big 6ft, 200 lb lunk – BECAUSE he ate the VERY LAST ‘tater tot’, nothing else in that kitchen left to eat! Guys at the party caught me as I flew through the air. Tell ME marijuana doesn’t stimulate the appetite for sick folks!
So, like I told the 35 year old Landlord, anybody who thinks marijuana doesn’t increase the appetite doesn’t know what they’re talking about. I truly don’t understand why the Feds are so focussed on harming the ill folks, so busy targeting the Medical Marijuana – while it’s okay to let bridges or levies collapse or bodies swelter in dome stadiums amongst families with no pampers. Probably too concerned with our trans-fat issues, or whatever other sillies they can scrape up to divert taxpayers’ attention.
@ 32, I take that back!
“Never got hooked on it or drove after using, myself, but sure had some great times.”
Once at a party 25 years ago, I ate a brownie and danged if I didn’t have a second one, never had seen brownies with sunflower seeds topping before. Never could figure how I made my way home with me and my car in mint condition. But it scared the crap out of me and I sure never did THAT again.
It was the ‘Green Room’ thing that resonated for me too. Currently we have in our own House of Representatives (New Zealand)a representative bunch of green roomers. Consistent with our demographic, the elected members are proportionately populated with those who have confessed to having toked (never to having enjoying it of course!) but who now either vilify both those who may, might or have and now choose to do nothing to correct the injustice before them.
Have they no integrity.
The institutionalised vilification is often directed at folk who never have, don’t and likely never will toke but see toxic absurdity of having a prohibitory policy that in such disrepute.
These very Green-Roomer Members avoid any accountability for the failure they preside over or acknowledge the culpable damage occurring on their watch.
When, in office, you know and choose to do nothing, it is misfeasance.
[I recall one Member of the House was even outed as a dealer in the widely distributed ‘Cannabis Culture’ Magazine. In his misspent youth, no doubt. He should have run for President with those qualifications.]
32
I gotta say, I’m in my early 50s and I never, ever, even entertained the idea of tokin’ on a joint. Maybe I bought into the reefer madness propaganda. Maybe I didn’t need it because no one could tell whether I was stoned or naturally in orbit. Maybe it just didn’t appeal to me. I dunno. I do remember kids I went to school and worked with using it, though, and most of them came out OK. One is an economics professor at Stanford these days.
I’m probably in the minority in that “never used it” category, though.
Even though I’m a life-long abstainer and hope my kids and grandkids never use the stuff, I am all in favor of reforming the laws on marijuana. Unfortuately it will take a lot to make it happen. Society, the government and big business are too invested in criminalizing it, both politically and monetarily, to drop it without a major fight.
@34
Great comment, thanks!
A libertarian friend has always opined that marijuana will never be legalized because it is too easy to grow in a backyard garden, thereby evading taxes. If people decided to switch from (heavily taxed) booze to legalized, untaxed, home-grown pot, gov’t would lose all that revenue.
As a conservative, the thing that has most bugged me about the Bush Admin. is the bombardment of ‘anti-drug’ ads. I detest both the marriage of gov’t and Madison Ave, and the war on drugs, so the ads send me over the edge. I even was pelted with one recently in ‘Popular Science’ mag. Makes me sick.
@34
I am in a third category, when I used MJ I found it fairly innocuous. If I want a hit there are many other ways of doing more that are not illegal.
I am sorry you do not want your grandkids totry pot. Why? My kids have not done so and i have kind of harassed them to try. I see pot as no different hen another flavor of wine, booze, a new tea, or whatever. The only difference here is the obsession of our government with this issue.
Persoannly, if Pot wer elegal I would use it mainly because of fairly extensive ev idence that is does njo harm.
It certainly didn’t start with Reagan–the Nixon years were noted for some particularly frenzied efforts to “stamp out the killer weed with roots in hell”. That’s actually when constitutional protection against “unreasonable search and seizure” went in the crapper right here in Washington, when passengers boarding the San Juan Islands ferry became subject to customs inspection if the boat came from Sydney BC. This was justified by the assumption that domestic and international passengers had “comingled” while onboard.
This was also the advent of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s practice of conducting giant “sting” operations. At one point, they set up one in Aspen, CO, moving in a large cadre of undercover agents with a huge “buy budget”. After a few months, in a town where drugs hadn’t been a significant issue, quite a few dealers had been attrected by all the guys wandering around waving wads of cash and asking where they could buy some weed. The local authorities ended up asking the federales to please take their dog and pony show elsewhere.
Word had it that the same modus operandi was employed to enable Poppy Bush to hold up a baggie of pot in a televised speech from the Oval Office and say with a straight face that it had been acquired “right across the street from the White House”.
Heavy…
An experiment…
I suggst that, as an experiment, we illegalize PuYa Tea. Currently there is a small market for this black, fermented tea. Imagine how long before it is VERY expensive?
An experiment…
I suggest that, as an experiment, we illegalize PuYa Tea. Currently there is a small market for this black, fermented tea. Imagine how long before it is VERY expensive?
And let’s not forget Nancy Reagan and her ‘Just Say No!’ goon squad proclaiming for all to hear in the ’80s about how marijuana was addictive, in complete contradiction to nearly a century’s worth of research (mostly British) that proved beyond any and all doubts that marijuana, in and of itself, was not addictive.
There is so much wrong with cannabis prohibition. If fiscal reality finally drives the people to action, then the sooner the better. I’m not sure who the strongest lobbyists in this fight would be. Would the financial losers of the pharmaceutical and prison-industrial complex have loud -enough of a voice to shout down the commercial growers for users and industrial hemp? Financially, it is a no-brainer for most of us to decide how stupid the drug-war is, particularly for cannabis. Legalize, and regulate it already!
Just a fun note after spending most of the day at Hempfest. David Guard from DRCNet spoke and mentioned that the article linked above about California was #1 on Digg and was linked from so many people, it brought their servers down for 12 hours this week.
Wow.
This very page is sponsored by a treatment centre that treats addiction to marijuana-a ridiculous notion by any stretch of the imagination ( I suppose it may be as dangerous as withdrawing from coffee) but it does speak to the hypocracy in the addiction and recovery business. Now we have intervention on Arts and Entertainment where week after week a group of sterotypes are being conned into going into some sort of treatment centre. Why not fix the society that is in fact producing these “dysfunctional”individuals so that we need less treatment centres not more . The truth is most drugs are harmful only because of the legal sanctions against them-two most people can and do quit addictive substances on their own and there is a natural history to so-called alcoholic drinking from teenage years to around 25 or 30 years of age. Three) Get the cops and the recovery industry out of the drug business each of whom profit from its illegality and regulate and educate about substance use ending it’s prohibition once and for all.
RR
What the pothead community needs is a group similar to the NRA with paid memberships & extensive lobbying. Gundamentalists (as Dave Ross calls us) are a small minority. Two thirds of Americans supported the ‘assault weapon’ ban, yet the NRA was able to reverse it, and even Dems are now afraid to broach the gun issue. The NRA has been able to harness the intensity of 2nd Amendment supporters, and thereby overcome a lack of numbers. Under current politics, I see no end in sight for the drug war.
SeattleJew @ 42:
I suggest that, as an experiment, we illegalize PuYa Tea.
PuYa, or PuErh? I’ve heard of the latter, never the former.
Currently there is a small market for this black, fermented tea. Imagine how long before it is VERY expensive?
If you get the good stuff, it’s pretty pricey already. I remember paying $130/lb. for aged PuErh in Taipei.
Meanwhile, in BC, 99 44/100% legal dope has resulted in mass unemployment, a tremendous migration of people from the province, and a precipitous drop in housing prices.
Oh, wait. None of that happened. Snap!
(the stuff doesn’t agree with me, but if someone else wants to smoke it, I’m happy to let them).
Transliterating a non phonetic language is difficult but yep we are talking about the smae thing.
I used to drink dragonwell and tell folks that the leaves were . well errr.
I think it is bizarre that all this effort goes into MJ (both pro and con) while any drug store has shelves of much more effective studd out for the gen public.