Pubdate: Wed, 17 Apr 2013
Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Copyright: 2013 C.E.G.W./Times-Shamrock
Contact:  http://www.metrotimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1381
Author: Bryan Gottlieb

MARCHING TOWARD CRITICAL MASS

History is punctuated by 'will of the people' and 'right makes might' 
moments; are supporters of legalizing pot ready for theirs?

"Reform the draconian marijuana laws" has been a rallying cry of this 
newspaper since its inception, with groves felled and gallons of ink 
spent outlining a folly - at a plant with medicinal, psychosocial and 
economic benefits.

While it's only taken 33 years (Metro Times' first edition was 
published in 1980), it seems as if that cry has finally moved the 
argument to a Rubicon of change; when we cross it depends on those 
who can influence the debate. According to an April 2013 report by 
the Pew Research Center, for the first time in more than four decades 
of polling on the issue, a majority of Americans now favor legalizing 
the use of marijuana. The poll, which has garnered a lot of attention 
from the mainstream press because of its significance, says 52 
percent of Americans now say marijuana should be legal.

For years, the prevailing view on weed has been a dismissive notion 
that it's a recreational drug enjoyed by the unmotivated and, worse, 
it's a gateway substance to "hard" drugs. Sadder still, a militarized 
approach toward its domestic eradication - including the 
incarceration of its users - has contributed to billions of dollars 
misspent and countless thousands of lives ruined by a hamstrung 
judiciary forced to impose mandatory minimum sentences.

The story arc of how America came to this point is as old as the 
country itself. From our most revered founder, George Washington, who 
chronicled his cultivation of hemp (the stem of the cannabis plant), 
to the inclusion of cannabis by early 20th century chemists in mixing 
medications, the story of America would be incomplete without including weed.

The first encroachment of government on the use and possession of 
marijuana began with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, which required 
the labeling of cannabis, and the amount contained, in 
over-the-counter remedies and food. Three decades later, Congress 
passed the Marijuana Tax Act in response to growing fear around the 
drug - a fear brought to you by Hollywood and its propaganda-laden 
masterpiece, Reefer Madness. The Marijuana Tax Act effectively 
outlaws pot; save for those who pay an excise tax for certain authorized uses.

Thereafter, the assault on weed grew bold: In 1951 Congress passed 
the Boggs Act, which established mandatory prison sentences for 
possessing and distributing drugs, including marijuana. Five years 
later, President Dwight Eisenhower signed into law the Narcotics 
Control Act, which established a minimum sentence of two to 10 years 
for a first-offense conviction of marijuana possession, and a fine of 
as much as $20,000.

But the most egregious assault on weed, and one that held public 
opinion in stasis for decades still to come, stems from the plant's 
classification as a Schedule I drug by the federal government under 
the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The Schedule I classification, 
which is the CSA's most damning, states that "a drug or other 
substance has a high potential for abuse; the drug or other substance 
has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United 
States, and; there is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug 
or other substance under medical supervision." Other Schedule I drugs 
include heroin and the date-rape concoction GHB.

Sadly, there was a brief moment before anti-pot hysteria fully 
metastasized when things could have turned out differently. As part 
of the omnibus legislation that also created the CSA, Congress 
established what would be known as the Shafer Commission, which was 
charged with studying marijuana abuse in the United States. Named for 
its chairman, former Pennsylvania Gov. Raymond P. Shafer, the 
commission was doomed to failure because the executive branch had 
little tolerance for views that differed from those of its chief executive.

During the commission's first report to Congress, Shafer, a moderate 
Republican, suggested the decriminalization of marijuana in small 
amounts, saying, in part:

"The criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession 
even in the effort to discourage use. It implies an overwhelming 
indictment of the behavior, which we believe is not appropriate. The 
actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to 
justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step 
[that] our society takes only with the greatest reluctance."

You would be right to ask yourself, then, how domestic policy toward 
marijuana use went off the rails so precipitously, languishing as a 
sideline issue for more than two additional generations.

Conventional wisdom suggests you need not look further than the 
dickhead who signed the CSA into existence. While it was never a 
secret, the Nixon White House was less than enlightened - despite 
Nixon's Sock-It-To-Me request from a young Goldie Hawn - and had the 
electorate known just what a shmuck Nixon really was, well ... we 
know how that turned out in the end.

The Shafer Commission was a big ole hornswoggle and its findings 
ignored by a hostile White House. Nixon, by his own admission, had no 
intention of considering decriminalization of pot. He hated pot and 
the counterculture it became associated with:

"I had a press conference in California, which was not televised but 
I was asked about marijuana because a study is being made by a, 
group, [unintelligible] the government. Now, my position is flat-out 
on that. I am against legalizing marijuana. Now I'm against 
legalizing marijuana because, I know all the arguments about, well, 
marijuana is no worse than whiskey, or etc. etc. etc.

"But the point is, once you cross that line, from the straight 
society to the drug society - marijuana, then speed, then it's LSD, 
then it's heroin, etc. then you're done," said Nixon, arbiter of 
justice, during one of his secretly recorded Oval Office 
conversations; this one made in May 1971 with his chief of staff, 
H.R. Haldeman and White House counsel, John Ehrlichman.

Lest you think the above is some anomaly (and we're pretty sure you 
don't), the following is transcribed from another Nixon recording 
between the president and Haldeman, in the Oval Office, toward the 
end of May 1971:

Nixon: "Now, this is one thing I want. I want a goddamn strong 
statement on marijuana. Can I get that out of this sonofabitching, 
uh, [commission]?"

Haldeman: "Sure."

Nixon: "I mean one on marijuana that just tears the ass out of them. 
I see another thing in the news summary this morning about it. You 
know it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for 
legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the christ is the matter with 
the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them? I suppose it's because 
most of them are psychiatrists, you know, there's so many, all the 
greatest psychiatrists are Jewish. By god we are going to hit the 
marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss, I 
want to find a way of putting more on that. ..."

Haldeman: "Mm hmm, yep."

Haldeman and Ehrlichman were each found guilty of orchestrating that 
infamous break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters 
in the Watergate office complex; both men served 18 months in federal custody.

Despite a seeming respite during the remainder of the 1970s, the 
crusade picked up with alacrity after the inauguration of Ronald 
Reagan in 1981. Throughout the next seven administrations, the 
viewpoint of at least more than half those Americans polled felt pot 
was too dangerous to view any other way then as a public scourge, 
like crack or heroin.

But, that was then. (As a point of reference, "then" reaches as far 
back as 2011.)

What's Turning the Tide?

THE PEW STUDY, which naturally has weed advocates buzzing, is 
groundbreaking in its unambiguous demonstration that a majority of 
Americans favor legalization. In a previous poll conducted by Gallup 
last November, the question of whether the federal government should 
take steps to enforce anti-marijuana laws in those states where 
marijuana use is legal, 64 percent of adults responded no; 34 percent 
said yes, the feds should trump state law. While an inference from 
the majority of respondents who said yes to states' rights was that 
marijuana should be legal in all states, when the question was asked 
whether you think marijuana should be legal, less than half, or 48 
percent, responded in the affirmative; 50 percent said pot should not be legal.

What's happened between then and now?

While it's not a simple answer, there seems to be a confluence of 
events that have led to a majority shift in opinion. By parsing Pew's 
results, one of the biggest drivers of change becomes self-evident: 
There's strength in numbers.

The percentage of support for legalizing pot is directly proportional 
to the generation of the respondent. For instance, members of what is 
called "The Silent Generation," those born between 1925-1945, 
continue to be less supportive of marijuana legalization than younger 
adults, but even here the amount favoring legalization has nearly 
doubled - from 17 percent to 32 percent - since 2002.

Compare that with fully 65 percent of millennials - those adults born 
since 1980 who are now between the ages of 18 and 32 - who favor 
legalizing the use of marijuana, which is up from just 36 percent in 
2008 and you'll start to understand the game-changer.

"It's an issue that has been framed in many different ways within 
recent years," says John Strate, a political science professor at 
Wayne State University in Detroit. "But generational replacement is 
likely the biggest cause for the shift in public opinion. Those older 
Americans who have traditionally been against legalization are dying 
out and a younger, more liberal generation has filled the gap."

Strate, who noted that political scientists would also examine the 
issue of legalization as a "moral politics" issue, said that the four 
decade-long war on drugs has also contributed to a shift in attitudes 
as more Americans have become aware of marijuana's medicinal 
properties as being legitimate and not the bogus red herring as 
previous administrations claimed.

"Elected officials are often reluctant to deal with issues in this 
category (other examples would be abortion and assisted suicide)," 
Strate wrote in an email. "Because, whatever position they take are 
certain to alienate a certain proportion of the public. Most of these 
issues are capable of being framed in different ways so public 
opinion on some of them can be fluid."

Yet there also has been a striking change in long-term attitudes 
among older generations, particularly baby boomers. Half of boomers 
now favor legalizing marijuana, among the highest percentages ever. 
In 1978, 47 percent of boomers favored legalizing marijuana, but 
support plummeted during the 1980s, reaching a low of 17 percent in 
1990. Since 1994, however, the percentage of boomers favoring 
legalization has doubled, from 24 percent to 50 percent.

Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980, and coming of age in the 
1990s when there was widespread opposition to legalizing pot, has 
also expressed a dramatic increase in support for legalization - from 
just 28 percent in 1994 to 42 percent a decade later, and 54 percent 
currently, according to the Pew study.

Underscoring Strate's notion of a moral issue being salient, part of 
the Pew study looked at whether respondents believed smoking pot to 
be a moral issue. Again, the numbers demonstrate a clear shift in 
attitude. Currently, 32 percent say that smoking marijuana is morally 
wrong, an 18-point decline since 2006, when 50 percent responded 
affirmatively to the question. Over this period, the percentage 
saying that smoking marijuana is not a moral issue has risen 15 
points, from 35 percent in '06 to 50 percent today.

As for that godforsaken War on Drugs, nearly three-quarters of 
Americans, 72 percent, say that federal efforts to enforce marijuana 
laws cost more than they are worth; and 60 percent say the federal 
government should not enforce federal laws prohibiting the use of 
marijuana in states where it is legal.

Slow and Steady,

State by State

Last November, voters in Washington state and Colorado approved 
ballot measures allowing for the personal use of small amounts of 
weed for recreational use. This brave new frontier, which comes on 
the heels of legalization's previous iteration, medical use, now 
counts 18 states, plus Washington, D.C., as those that have some type 
of law on the books permitting the cultivation, possession and use of 
marijuana.

This past February, a coalition of congressional lawmakers, led by 
Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO) and Earl Blumenaur (D-OR), introduced a bill 
titled the "Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act," which seeks to 
remove the Drug Enforcement Administration's authority over marijuana 
and allow each state to choose whether cannabis should be legal. 
Blumenauer's "Marijuana Tax Equity Act" would create a federal excise 
tax on the drug. Combined, the two bills would create a regulation 
and taxation system for marijuana in states where it's legal.

Polis told his hometown newspaper, the Boulder, Colo., Daily Camera, 
his proposed legislation doesn't force any state to legalize 
marijuana. But, he said, Colorado and the 18 other jurisdictions that 
have chosen to allow marijuana for medical or recreational use 
deserve the certainty of knowing federal agents won't raid their 
state-legal businesses.

"Congress should simply allow states to regulate marijuana as they 
see fit and stop wasting federal tax dollars on a failed drug war," 
he was quoted as saying.

Polis also said he expects his measure could draw bipartisan support 
from fellow Democrats and from Republicans, especially those with 
Libertarian leanings.

A POTENTIAL ISSUE waiting for supporters of legalization is the 
discrepancy between legalization and decriminalization. While the 
practical effects are likely negligible, the difference could easily 
be used as a cudgel by proponents to derail momentum on the issue and 
set back a cause ripe for blossoming. (This is, after all, a story 
about weed - flowery metaphors are a must-have.)

Whether Americans want to see cannabis regulated like alcohol and 
tobacco versus whether they just want to let potheads be left alone 
will make the difference in how the issue is ultimately legislated.

"Most Americans would not be familiar with the difference between 
legalization and decriminalization," said Strate, the professor at 
Wayne State. "Legalization makes it OK to do something; 
decriminalization removes criminal penalties and replaces them with 
civil penalties."

Given the economic impact that regulating cannabis likely offers to 
federal coffers, it seems likely that once politicians get over their 
fear of retribution from those pockets of holdout constituents, weed 
will be taxed, retaxed and then taxed some more. Then another fight 
begins ... overregulation. Not to put the cart before the horse, but 
it now sounds like a Republican dream.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom