Pubdate: Sun, 06 Jan 2013
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2013 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Neal Peirce, Washington Post Writers Group

GLIMMERS OF HOPE ON DRUG FRONT

In the midst of fierce winter storms, dire budget crises and a tragedy
as deep and disturbing as Newtown, it's possible to discern at least
one glimmer of positive news. It's a new openness to drug law reform.

No, the United States isn't quite ready to abandon its concerted "war
on drugs." It's "as vicious as ever," notes Tony Newman of the Drug
Policy Alliance. More than 750,000 people a year are arrested for
marijuana possession. More than 500,000 are behind bars for some type
of drug law violation. No other nation even begins to equal these
figures. The cumulative negative impact on human lives is nothing less
than breathtaking.

Still, change is brewing. A first dramatic finding was a Gallup poll,
released late in 2011, showing 50 percent of Americans now favor
legalized marijuana use - up from 36 percent just six years ago.

But the top drug news of 2012 was the Election Day decision of voters
in Colorado and Washington to legalize marijuana, not just for
medicinal but for recreational sales and use as well.

The Obama administration could have spoiled the outcome by insisting
on prosecuting marijuana sale and use in those states. Marijuana
remains - quite preposterously - classified under the Controlled
Substances Act as a substance with high potential for abuse and no
accepted medical application.

But President Obama, who's been mostly silent on drug issues, has now
made a clear decision. Asked about the Colorado and Washington
referendums, he told ABC News' Barbara Walters: "We've got bigger
fish to fry. ... It does not make sense from a prioritization point
of view for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that
has already said that under state law, that's legal."

This doesn't necessarily mean the administration - with a record of
repeated crackdowns on the medical marijuana industry in California -
might not still go after producers in Colorado and Washington.

But liberalization's time seems finally to have arrived. The cause
just received its first truly powerful congressional boost. Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote in December
to the White House drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, suggesting federal
legislation might legalize up to an ounce of marijuana, at least in
the states that permit it. Leahy also sought assurance that Colorado
and Washington officials would not be prosecuted for implementing
their new laws.

Leahy's move, including his suggestion of Senate hearings, is "really
significant," a "shot fired across the bow" of standard "war on drugs"
practice, suggests Drug Policy Alliance leader Ethan Nadelmann.
Eighteen states have legalized medical marijuana use, Nadelmann notes,
but before Leahy, not one of those states' 36 senators had spoken up
to defend their own states' legalization laws.

Other key signs of new and open debate: endorsement of marijuana
decriminalization both by Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, who has known
presidential ambitions, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, a former
Obama White House chief of staff.

Plus, two powerful new films may generate rising popular support for
drug reform action.

Noted producer Eugene Jarecki's image-packed "The House I Live In"
depicts America's drug war as little less than "a holocaust in slow
motion."

Wherever he went on a 25-state investigative journey, Jarecki wrote
recently to The Nation magazine: "Everyone involved - prisoners, cops,
judges, jailers, wardens, medical experts, senators - all described to
me a system out of control, a predatory monster that sustains itself
upon the mass incarceration of fellow human beings. Their crimes, most
often the nonviolent use and sale of drugs in petty quantities, have
become such a warping fixation for our prison industrial complex that
they are often punished more severely than violent crime."

Jarecki's film doesn't get into specific drug use reform
possibilities. But the other new film, "Breaking the Taboo," does
precisely that. Reviewing the horrors of the oppressive and often
bloody drug wars both in the United States' and worldwide - from
Colombia to Afghanistan to Mexico - the film raises the image of more
peaceful solutions, legalization of marijuana and, for more serious
drugs, individual counseling of addicts to reconstruct their lives
rather than sentencing them to years or decades of
incarceration.

Several ex-presidents of nations are featured in the film, lamenting
drug war costs and suggesting humane alternatives - among them Jimmy
Carter and Bill Clinton of the United States, Fernando H. Cardoso of
Brazil, and Ruth Dreifuss of Switzerland. And there's an appearance by
Colombian President Manuel Santos, whose nation has been ravaged by
drug wars (with heavy U.S. support). Santos recently became the first
sitting national leader to join the chorus to "break the taboo,"
insisting it's time to replace the futile "wars" against drugs and
drug cartels, even to consider forms of drug legalization.

Before its box-office debut, "Breaking the Taboo" can be seen free
online, at www.breakingthetaboo.info.
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