Pubdate: Sun, 06 Nov 2011
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2011 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.signonsandiego.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
Note: Seldom prints LTEs from outside it's circulation area.
Author: Margaret Dooley-Sammuli
Note: Dooley-Sammuli, a San Diego resident, is deputy state director 
in Southern California with the Drug Policy Alliance, the nation's 
leading organization working to end the war on drugs.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

DECRIMINALIZATION IS NOT ENOUGH

Marijuana prohibition is a policy choice, not a fact of life. With a 
devastating economic downturn and increasing violence associated with 
illicit drug syndicates, that choice makes sense to fewer people than 
ever. Forty years after the war on drugs started, an October Gallup 
poll found for the first time that 50 percent of Americans support 
making marijuana legal. The poll indicated that only 46 percent 
oppose ending marijuana prohibition.

No other law is enforced so harshly and pervasively yet deemed 
unnecessary by so many Americans. Almost half of U.S. adults admit in 
government surveys to having tried marijuana at least once. 
Politicians on the campaign trail readily admit to being members of 
that group. And yet over 800,000 people are arrested every year for 
violating marijuana laws - the vast majority for personal possession 
- - at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars. In every state, people 
of color are disproportionately arrested for marijuana offenses.

Fourteen states, including California, have tried to address the 
hypocrisy and waste of marijuana prohibition by lowering criminal 
penalties. In January, California reduced the penalty for possession 
of under an ounce of marijuana from a misdemeanor to an infraction, a 
finable offense that does not carry a penalty of incarceration. Even 
with this positive change, however, marijuana laws will continue to 
soak up local law enforcement time (to issue infractions) and waste 
court and jail resources (to prosecute and incarcerate those who do 
not or cannot pay their fines) - and will probably continue to have a 
disproportionate impact on people of color.

Decriminalization also fails to address the huge underground supply 
chain for marijuana. The value of marijuana produced in the U.S. to 
meet domestic demand is estimated to be over $35 billion, making it 
the nation's largest cash crop. This immense market is completely 
untaxed, a source of revenue that federal and state governments can 
ill afford to neglect.

Prohibition - even where possession is decriminalized - ensures that 
this vast market enriches criminal organizations and contributes to 
violence, crime and corruption on a massive scale. Virtually all 
"marijuana-related violence" is a direct result of prohibition, which 
keeps responsible, regulated businesses out of the market. Since 
illegal businesses have no legitimate means to settle disputes, 
violence inevitably results - just as it did during alcohol Prohibition.

Gallup has been asking Americans since 1970, "Do you think the use of 
marijuana should be made legal, or not?" Forty years ago, support 
registered at 12 percent, rose to 28 percent by the late 1970s, 
dipped slightly during the 1980s, and then rose gradually to 36 
percent in 2005. In the past six years, however, support has jumped 
dramatically, with important implications for state and national 
marijuana policy. Majorities of men, liberals, 18-29 year-olds, 
moderates, independents, Democrats, 30-49 year-olds, and voters in 
Western, Midwestern and Eastern states now support legalizing cannabis.

Proposition 19 was a turning point for the national debate. Last 
November, more than 4.6 million Californians (46.5 percent of those 
at the polls) voted to end marijuana prohibition and replace it with 
sensible regulations for adult marijuana consumption, sales, and 
cultivation. That campaign moved marijuana legalization into the 
mainstream of U.S. politics, forged an unprecedented model reform 
coalition, and made ending marijuana prohibition in California a 
matter of when and how.

For an increasingly wide range of groups - including the California 
branch of the NAACP, the California affiliates of the American Civil 
Liberties Union, the California Young Democrats, the Republican 
Liberty Caucus, the California Council of Churches, several big labor 
unions and most recently the California Medical Association - the 
question is not whether marijuana prohibition should end, but what 
marijuana regulation should look like.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom