Pubdate: Tue, 13 Jul 2010
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2010 The Washington Times, LLC.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Sutton Stokes
Note: Now based in Missoula, Montana Elkins, West Virginia after 
three decades on the coasts, Sutton is a freelance business writer 
and journalist. He writes the Missoula Notebook for the 
nationally-award-winning online news source New West, keeps a blog, 
and can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Click here for an overview 
of what Went West is all about.

IS MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION FINALLY ON THE MARCH IN THE U.S.?

ELKINS, West. Va. (7/13/10) -- Apparently the latest scary thing that 
the kids are doing is smoking something called "K2," which this 
recent New York Times article describes as "a blend of herbs treated 
with synthetic marijuana." By packaging K2 as "incense," purveyors 
"have managed to evade federal regulation," so the stuff is widely, 
legally available. Only eight states have passed laws banning it to 
date, and, as soon as bans pass, chemists can quickly sidestep them 
by making minor tweaks at the molecular level.

Is it dangerous? The man who designed K2--for laboratory research 
purposes--says its "effects in humans have not been studied and [it] 
could very well have toxic effects." Apparently so: implicated in one 
death so far (albeit a suicide, not an overdose), K2 is sending to 
emergency rooms and poison control centers more and more people who, 
while not necessarily at risk of dying, don't seem to be enjoying the trip.

Even if it were established that K2 is in some sense "safe," there is 
no one monitoring whether the gaudy little packets available from 
multiple manufacturers actually contain K2 or the aforementioned 
tweaked versions, which medical science knows even less about.

Why would anyone smoke this stuff? Simple: people like to get high, 
but smoking actual marijuana puts you at risk of failing 
employer-mandated drug tests as late as 100 days after your last 
puff, even if it is safer than aspirin. That, as the article 
explains, is the rub:

"[M]any users say they are undaunted by reports of negative reactions 
to the drug. K2 does not show up on drug tests, and users say that 
while they would like to know what is in it, they would take their 
chances if it means a clean urine test."

Naturally, the DEA stands ready to spend yet more of your tax money 
figuring out how to impose an effective nationwide ban on this 
synthetic marijuana substitute, but I have a better idea, one that 
more and more people--especially the voters of California--seem to be 
agreeing with: legalize the real thing.

This year marks the beginning of the fifth decade of America's 
so-called "war on drugs," a term first used by Richard Nixon in 1969 
and codified into national policy with passage of the 1970 
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. As of 2008, this 
war is costing us about $40 billion per year at the federal, state, 
and local levels, or more than $1,000 each second.

With all of this time and money invested, there can be no doubt 
that--any minute now--we will arrest the last remaining drug dealers 
and convert their final few customers from wanting to get high on 
controlled substances to wanting to get high on life--or at least on 
safe, legal drugs like Miller Lite and Marlboros.

Nonetheless, the state of California seems to be experiencing a 
failure of nerve, at least where marijuana is concerned. This 
November, that state's voters will have the opportunity to legalize 
the deadly weed by voting yes on Proposition 19, and current polling 
finds that passage--i.e., legalization--is not out of reach.

Well, we can hope. Most people don't start paying attention to 
elections this far out, and the polls don't yet reflect the effects 
of whatever fear-mongering ads will run on television in the last 
weeks before Election Day, paid for by coalitions that may very well 
include medical-marijuana businesses and their suppliers. After all, 
a vote to legalize would bust their quasi-legal monopoly and probably 
lower prices as a result. But the fact that legalization is even on 
the ballot, much less that it's still polling so well, is a 
significant development in itself.

Is this rare flicker of sanity concerning the "drug war" a sign of 
things to come nationwide? Maybe. One reason to think so is that, 
according to Josh Green, who writes for The Atlantic, Democratic 
Party leaders are realizing that referendums to legalize marijuana 
are a pretty good way to motivate the liberal base to get out the 
vote in off-year elections, in the same way that referendums to 
prevent gays from marrying are so often used to get Republican voters 
off of their couches. Says Green:

"Acting on a tip from an Obama official, I found a few Democratic 
consultants who have become convinced that ballot initiatives 
legalizing marijuana, like the one Californians will vote on in 
November, actually help Democrats in the same way that gay marriage 
bans were supposed to have helped Republicans."

So we may start to see more and more states follow California's lead 
and offer their own legalization referendums. Combine that with the 
public's increasing frustration at the prospect of longer sentences 
for pot convictions than for rape and murder, and legalization just 
might be on the march.

It will still be an uphill march, of course. Most mainstream 
politicians--even those who've admitted to smoking up--remain unable 
to discuss the issue without giggling like a tenth-grader after his 
first bong hit. Unsurprisingly, many law enforcement officials remain 
fiercely opposed, too. They say the main reason for their concern is 
that, even though it is estimated that you would have to smoke 1,500 
pounds of pot in 14 minutes to achieve a lethal dose, the substance 
deserves continued status as "dangerous" because it functions as a 
"gateway" to harder drugs.

I'm actually willing to concede this last point, but only in the 
sense that marijuana's illegality forces its users into the kinds of 
associations that make other illegal drugs easier to obtain. But this 
is not a condition that will continue to hold for Californians if, by 
this time next year, you can buy a quarter bag in a San Francisco 
7-Eleven. And if it doesn't pass, and people continue to smoke K2 and 
its variants, couldn't we just as eaily say that marijuana 
prohibition is the "gateway" that leads them to use these more dangerous drugs?

The "gateway" claim against pot is mere rationalization, of course. 
The real reasons for law enforcement's continued opposition to 
legalization probably lie somewhere near the intersection of two 
related counter-incentives.

First, there is the fact that pot arrests count as reportable 
victories in the "war on drugs," at the same time that they are 
relatively easy arrests to make.

After all, if you were a cop, which door would you rather take? One 
with amped-up, paranoid crackheads on the other side? Or one where 
you can hear an occasional gurgling noise and a bunch of guys 
laughing at Pineapple Express?

Second, Washington pays local police to hate pot--as if getting to 
ride around in armored personnel carriers, wear ski masks, and carry 
rifles in tactical slings weren't inducement enough to swell the 
ranks of "drug warriors."

A recent Wall Street Journal article detailed a federal program that 
provides billions of dollars per year to local law enforcement 
agencies around the nation, the "majority of [which has] to be used 
to fight pot." In these cash-strapped times, it's hard for cops to 
look past a ready source of funds like this one. The article quotes 
Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko as admitting that, while he'd 
rather use his $340,000 grant to hire three new officers to patrol 
for drunks and prevent street crime, marijuana is "where the money is."

Combine feckless leaders with a program like that one, and it's 
obvious that efforts to overcome official resistance to rationalizing 
our marijuana laws will constitute what pot farmers might call "a 
tough row to hoe." Even if California does vote to legalize, well, 
it's California--I'm guessing progress in other states will remain 
slow at best.

In the meantime, we will have to continue to endure a prison system 
overloaded by people guilty of the heinous act of taking the smoke of 
the wrong kind of dried plant into their lungs; the diversion of law 
enforcement resources from truly dangerous crimes; emergency-room 
visits from people burned by their efforts to legally approximate a 
THC high; and the ongoing massacre of innocent dogs in drug raids 
(seriously, it's a problem).

But hey, war is hell, I guess.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart