Pubdate: Wed, 08 Dec 2004
Source: Weekly Planet (FL)
Copyright: 2004 Weekly Planet Inc.
Contact:  http://www.weeklyplanet.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/611
Author: Wayne Garcia

WHITE REPUBLICANS ON DOPE

Marijuana Remains a Taboo Issue In Mainstream Florida
Politics.

I have to admit it felt very strange earlier this year when one of the
handful of weekly magazines to which I subscribe arrived at my Tampa
home with a cover adorned by a marijuana leaf and the headline, "Going
to Pot."

It was an appeal for "principled conservative leadership" to
re-examine this nation's war on drugs on fiscal grounds (upholding
laws against marijuana alone costs about $10-$15 billion a year
nationally).

"What's needed now are conservative politicians willing to say enough
is enough: Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars down the drain each
year. People losing their jobs, their property, and their freedom for
nothing more than possessing a joint or growing a few marijuana
plants," the magazine intoned.

"And all for what? To send a message? To keep pretending that we're
protecting our children?" the cover story asked. "Alcohol Prohibition
made a lot more sense than marijuana prohibition does today -- and it,
too, was a disaster."

The name of the wild-eyed rag running this pro-pot
propaganda?

William F. Buckley Jr.'s conservative weekly bible, the National
Review.

"And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using
marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who
give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend,"
Buckley himself wrote two weeks after the marijuana cover story ran.
"If all our laws were paradigmatic, imagine what we would do to anyone
caught lighting a cigarette, or drinking a beer. Or=85 committing
adultery. Send them all to Guantanamo?"

Marijuana as a public issue now mirrors marijuana as agricultural
product: It's growing all over the nation. Consider:

* Eleven states have passed laws since 1996 allowing the use of
marijuana for medical purposes. That law is now being challenged by
the forward thinkers at John Ashcroft's Justice Department, and the
Supreme Court will rule soon whether the federal government can
supersede state rights in this area. Marijuana advocates have not lost
a vote on the issue at the state level.

* Two states, California and Arizona, have voted to require treatment
rather than jail time for those arrested on drug possession charges.
Two others, Utah and Oregon, have voted to reform laws which allow
governments to seize cars and personal belongings of anyone connected
with drug use.

* Hardly anyone who is seriously running for president these days can
deny marijuana use, or at the least, experimentation. President
Clinton admitted trying it. John Kerry and Al Gore, the last two
Democratic nominees, too. President George W. Bush won't confirm or
deny any drug use, but come on =85

Given the popular image of Florida as a party-hearty kind of state,
with drug use central to both myth and reality from Margaritaville to
Miami Vice, you'd think we would be playing a part in this national
debate over legalization, drug policy reform and medical marijuana.

But you would be wrong. We've had no referenda here. No statewide
political discussion. I never heard of or saw the issue of marijuana
included in a campaign's political poll in my nine years of running
campaigns.

For a state with a stoner culture, we're stuck in the Stone Age when
it comes to talking about pot. We're a red state, not a Panama Red
state.

In Tampa Bay and all of Florida, discussion about marijuana in any
form or shape -- be it decriminalizing, legalizing or allowing use of
medical marijuana -- remains a third-rail kind of issue. Strictly
verboten. A moral decision, not a fiscal one.

"I don't see any Republican talking about medical marijuana," said
former state Representative Sandy Murman. "We've not had those
conversations. I can't imagine anybody going there. This is very
un-conservative."

But Rose Ferlita, a Republican in a nonpartisan Tampa City Council
seat, added: "I don't think this is a partisan issue."

She's probably right. In 1988, when a petition drive was mounted to
put medical marijuana on the ballot, it was opposed by the late
Governor Lawton Chiles, a Democrat, and his cabinet. Democratic
presidential candidate Howard Dean opposed legalizing medical
marijuana when he was governor of Vermont.

Buckley isn't the only conservative who sees marijuana as an issue
ripe for reform. Ronald Reagan's communications director, Lyn
Nofziger, who lost a daughter to cancer, advocates medical marijuana.
Charley Reese, the conservative syndicated columnist for the Orlando
Sentinel until his retirement in 2001, wrote more than a decade ago
that the drug war is a failure and wastes money.

But in Florida, those conservative voices have fallen on deaf
ears.

Florida has no major effort underway for any ballot initiatives
related to marijuana. The 1999-2000 efforts on behalf of medical
marijuana were snuffed out. A later plan to amend the Constitution to
require treatment instead of jail time got all the way to the Florida
Supreme Court for approval of wording in 2002. But the Florida Drug
Treatment Initiative (funded by, among others, liberal billionaire
George Soros) died when the court took its sweet time in approving the
ballot language. Promises that the movement would be revived in 2004
proved empty.

"Right now, money and power can buy ballot initiatives," Murman said.
"When it comes down to it, how many people are really going to support
[medical marijuana legislation]? Even your big liberals, are they
really going to support something like that?"

Not in Florida.

"I have received various phone calls (3-4) in the last two years
asking if I would sponsor legislation to legalize 'grass' for medical
purposes," said Ed Homan, a surgeon and Republican member of the
Florida House, in an e-mail. "The medical profession, except for the
very few doctors who support it, would not back me on the issue. I
would run the risk of losing their financial support in future races
because mainstream medicine doesn't support it."

The most sympathetic read you will get from a local Republican on the
issue comes from Ferlita, whose opinion on medical marijuana is
informed by the fact that as an inner-city pharmacy owner, she has a
large HIV-positive clientele who depend on the legal marijuana
derivative Marinol for relief.

"In terms of terminal patients, marijuana is a wonderful drug," Ferlita
said. (Disclosure: I have done political consulting for Ferlita, Murman
and Homan in the past.) "Let's not try to overlook the good from
something just because it is an illegal drug."

Before you go penciling in Councilwoman Ferlita for your next
bong-fest, however, realize that she is also a consultant to a
substance abuse nonprofit and sees marijuana as a dangerous gateway
drug. She doesn't favor any form of legalization or
decriminalization.

"You see many people in those facilities who started with marijuana,"
Ferlita said. "I can't discount the fact that, right now, marijuana is
an illegal drug and it is abused."

So, marijuana is a nice issue for conservative intellectuals to
debate, but not for Florida politicians who have to face increasingly
moralistic voters every few years. Even if, according to a 2003 Zogby
International poll, 41 percent of the U.S. public supports treating
marijuana use the same way we do alcohol.

Finally, it's the public that will have to force the issue, and not
politicians -- particularly conservative ones.

As Buckley put it: "Conservatives pride themselves on resisting
change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to
tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral
fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma
because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great."
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MAP posted-by: SHeath(DPFFLorida)