Pubdate: Sat, 20 Sep 2008
Source: Standard-Times (New Bedford, MA)
Copyright: 2008 South Coast Media Group
Contact:  http://www.southcoasttoday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/422
Author: Jack Spillane
Cited: Question 2 http://sensiblemarijuanapolicy.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Committee+for+Sensible+Marijuana+Policy
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?161 (Marijuana - Regulation)

WHAT IS LAW ENFORCEMENT SMOKING TO OPPOSE QUESTION 2?

All the suits who make a living -- monetarily, politically and
otherwise -- off the criminal marijuana laws were there the other day.

There must have been 30 of them. Standing on the steps of the New
Bedford Superior Court like a phalanx of armed guards, ready to
protect the public against the enemy.

Protect us against what?

Why, those horrible marijuana laws, the ones that if we don't keep in
place, everyone in Massachusetts under 18 will soon be heading for the
corner drug dealer. As if any kid who wants to doesn't do that now.

You know the criminal marijuana possession laws.

They're the same laws that 11 other states have already eliminated
(some of them as long ago as the 1970s) with little to no change in
the rates of drug use.

You know the kind of places where they've decriminalized small amounts
of marijuana, exotic places like Maine and Ohio. But don't go downeast
on vacation -- those Maine drug gangs are out of control!

Other states that have decriminalized marijuana include such libertine
hotbeds as Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska and Minnesota.

But there they stood the other day, Bristol and Barnstable counties'
finest, all the folks employed by this big, big government business we
call the War on Drugs. They as much as warned that we could become
like China during the opium wars if those marijuana penalties are loosened.

These are the folks who are currently in charge of this so-called
battle against drugs, the war that the country has failed to win for
half a century. They were competing with each other for most alarmist
comment of the day.

"This will lead to more violence," said Bristol County District
Attorney Sam Sutter, dismissing out of hand the views of many
mainstream citizens that prosecuting marijuana possession is both
unreasonable and prohibitively expensive.

Mr. Sutter is nothing if not determined to prove he's tough on
crime.

"This ridiculous initiative would put our children and young people in
dangerous situations" with violent marijuana dealers, he intoned.

And "I don't want to hear," he said, those "specious" and "bogus"
arguments that marijuana is like alcohol. Alcohol, he informed the
media event, can have health benefits. You know, like wine, he said.

And tobacco? Why, that takes a long time to do damage, he
informed.

Ah, Sam, say it ain't so.

Not to be outdone, Fall River Mayor Bob Correia trotted out the
time-tested "gateway" argument.

"Marijuana," he said, is "the one they start our children off
with!"

Ah, the children. It's always the children.

So on went the show, speaker after speaker pointing out that hard drug
users are also marijuana users and that they inhabit a violent economy.

So what? These hoods are also alcohol users, and maybe a lot of them
like pizza, too.

The only guy to bring a modicum of reality to the proceedings was
Barnstable County Sheriff Jim Cummings. He sounded as if he knew he
was trapped in a politically-correct soap box but dared not get out.

"This morning, in the Barnstable County correctional facility, no one
there was serving time for 1 ounce or less of marijuana," he said.

The sheriff was conceding that no one even prosecutes for 1 ounce or
less of marijuana now! But he quickly slipped back into the gateway
argument, saying it's just "common sense" that decriminalizing
marijuana sends the wrong message about other DRUGS!

So what presaged this courthouse gathering, along with the unanimous
opposition to decriminalization of every sheriff and district attorney
in the state?

Why, Ballot Question 2 of the Committee for Sensible Marijuana
Policy.

The committee in November is putting an outrageous question before the
people. "Wouldn't it make sense to make possession of an ounce or less
of marijuana a civil offense punishable by a $100 fine?"

Here's a couple of facts to chew:

Jeffrey Miron, an economics lecturer at Harvard, estimates the state
spent $29.5 million on 17,229 arrests involving marijuana possession
in 2006. Now, many of those folks were undoubtedly charged with
multiple crimes and the marijuana charge was used as leverage, but
isn't that a little like charging social drinkers with drunken driving
at an accident scene even though their blood alcohol is below the .08
limit?

A 2008 study -- undertaken by, among others, the National Research
Council -- cited multiple research that found no clear relationship
between drug criminalization and drug use. "As in the case of underage
alcohol and tobacco use, current enforcement may have a stronger
effect on where people carry or use drugs, rather than on whether they
do so," the study concluded.

All the blue-shirts in the world speaking authoritatively won't change
the fact that the 50-year drug war has failed relentlessly.

The simple fact is -- as was proven during equally crime-ridden
Prohibition -- you can't enforce a law the public is determined to
ignore.

The law enforcement types have it wrong. It's the Committee for
Sensible Marijuana Policy that knows what it's talking about.

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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin