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