Pubdate: 21-28 September 2000
Source: Boston Phoenix (MA)
Copyright: 2000 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group.
Contact:  126 Brookline Ave., Boston, MA 02215
Fax: (617) 536-1463
Feedback: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/standard/feedback.html
Website: http://www.phx.com/
Note: LTEs requested at bottom

REEFER MADNESS

Our laws against smoking marijuana don't make any sense

Vice-President Al Gore was something of a pothead during his college and
Vietnam days. Former US senator Bill Bradley smoked the devil's weed when he
was a professional basketball player. New Mexico governor Gary Johnson has
not only smoked pot, but also called for its legalization. And Vermont
governor Howard Dean toked up as a teenager. If all these upstanding
citizens manage to combine pot smoking with responsible lives, then why are
we still putting people in jail for smoking marijuana?

Let's face it: a lot of people smoke pot. They do so regularly. And despite
what you'll hear in a grade-school DARE lecture, pot doesn't have the
addictive and destructive qualities of cocaine and heroin. Nor does it act
as a "gateway" to these other, more devastating drugs. But then, you
probably already knew that. Marijuana, after all, is the third-most-popular
recreational drug in this country, following tobacco and alcohol. Chances
are you've toked up once or twice yourself.

Although advocates for the decriminalization or legalization of marijuana do
themselves no favors by deliberately provoking cops, as many did this past
weekend by smoking publicly at the 2000 Freedom Rally on Boston Common, the
bottom line is that they're right. Our laws regulating the use of marijuana
need to change. If ever there was a case that showed how haphazardly these
laws are enforced, it occurred this past January when 15.2 grams of
marijuana were found in Whitney Houston's purse by an airport official in
Kona, Hawaii.

You can be sentenced to up to 30 days in jail and fined $1000 if found
guilty of possessing 15.2 grams of pot in Hawaii. The same crime in
Massachusetts could net you anything from probation to six months in prison
and a $500 fine. So what did Houston get? Little more than a hassle. She
boarded her plane in Kona and flew to San Francisco. After publicly toying
with the idea of prosecuting her, officials in Hawaii announced in April
that they wouldn't file any charges against the pop diva.

When Keith Stroup, the executive director of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws, testified before Congress in July 1999, he
pointed out that two of our last five presidents agreed that our punishments
for possessing marijuana are actually more damaging than anything about the
drug itself. In 1972, President Richard Nixon convened a commission to study
the issue. It concluded that federal and state laws should be amended to end
criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of the weed. And in August
of 1977, as Stroup noted, President Jimmy Carter delivered a message to
Congress in which he repeated the commission's findings: "Penalties against
drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the
drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession
of marijuana in private for personal use."

Since the 1970s, citizens in Alaska, Arizona, California, Oregon, Maine, and
Washington have voted to legalize medicinal use of marijuana. And two weeks
ago, a US District Court judge ruled that federal officials do not have the
authority to punish physicians who prescribe marijuana for their patients
pursuant to state laws.

Still, law-enforcement officials in this country continue to arrest and
imprison people for smoking pot -- regardless of its medicinal use. In 1997,
the last year for which statistics are available, 695,200 people were
arrested for violating marijuana laws. That same year in Massachusetts,
11,202 people were arrested for marijuana offenses.

This November, voters in Alaska will consider a measure to legalize
marijuana entirely. Voters in Colorado, Florida, and Nevada will consider
ballot questions that would legalize marijuana for medical purposes. (Nevada
voters actually approved this measure in 1998, but proposals to amend that
state's constitution must pass in two consecutive elections before becoming
law.) Here in Massachusetts, voters in four districts will consider
public-policy questions instructing state representatives and state senators
to support a measure changing the possession of less than one ounce of
marijuana from a criminal offense to a civil violation.

Come November, the Phoenix urges voters in Boxford, Georgetown, Hamilton,
Ipswich, Manchester, Wenham, Framingham, Chatham, Dennis, Eastham, Harwich,
Orleans, Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Medford, Winchester, Woburn, and
Somerville to support these local policy questions. Beyond that, we need to
urge our lawmakers to apply common sense to the regulation of marijuana.
"When the laws don't fit the times," says William Downing, president of the
Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition, "then they lose their moral impact
altogether."

What do you think? Send an e-mail to  ---
MAP posted-by: Don Beck