Pubdate: Mon, 07 Jul 2014
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2014 The Baltimore Sun Company
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Page: 12

THE HARRIS BOYCOTT

D.C.'s call to boycott Eastern Shore over pot decriminalization
dispute unlikely to move a congressman who is often wrong but never in
doubt

Last week, D.C. Vote, a 40,000-member advocacy group pushing for
District of Columbia voting rights, called on supporters to boycott
Eastern Shore vacation spots - including Ocean City - this summer.
Outgoing D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray even suggested that city residents
who do end up in a vacation destination anywhere in Maryland's 1st
Congressional District may want to bring along a picket sign.

Their collective ire isn't really directed at the various hoteliers,
restaurant owners, condo managers or lifeguards who stand to lose
should such a boycott succeed, but at Rep. Andy Harris, the Republican
congressman from Cockeysville whose district happens to include the
Eastern Shore. Last month, Dr. Harris succeeded in attaching an
amendment to a 2015 spending bill that would prevent D.C. from using
local funds to decriminalize marijuana.

There are several notable elements in this imbroglio. First, anyone
who believes that Dr. Harris might change his mind because of a
potential economic threat to his district doesn't know Dr. Harris, a
man not given to self-doubt or the concerns of others. This is someone
who actively fights against efforts by the EPA to reduce pollution
flowing into the Chesapeake Bay and to forestall the effects of
climate change and rising sea levels, either of which would be far
more ruinous to his waterfront district than a mere summer boycott.

More remarkable is that Dr. Harris, a reliable Club For Growth and tea
party acolyte who so often preaches against an overbearing federal
government, is so proud to have thwarted the will of District
residents. The decriminalization measure has the support of 80 percent
of the populace, according to a recent poll.

But wait, the hypocrisy runs much deeper than that. The Maryland
General Assembly this year passed legislation decriminalizing
possession of small amounts of marijuana, a policy supported by
somewhere between 70 percent and 90 percent of Marylanders, depending
on the poll. In other words, the people living in Dr. Harris' own
district will see the benefits of the decriminalization that the
congressman wants to deny D.C. residents. That Dr. Harris is white and
a majority of the District is African-American, a group far more often
discriminated against by enforcement of existing marijuana laws,
should not be lost on anyone either.

Dr. Harris claims to have introduced the marijuana amendment in an
effort to protect children - and he pulls out the "P" card (his
credentials as a Johns Hopkins physician) to do so. But then he also
says that D.C. police can always choose not to enforce existing
marijuana possession laws on their own - essentially conceding that
his tough-on-drugs crusade is an empty gesture that might actually
cause more harm if it leads to no marijuana possession restrictions of
any kind being enforced.

The reality is that the District has one of the nation's highest
per-capita arrest rates for marijuana possession, according to a
recent American Civil Liberties Union report, and more than 90 percent
of those arrested are black. That disparity (despite surveys that show
whites and blacks use marijuana in equal measure) is a major reason
why the D.C. City Council passed decriminalization last spring. The
claim that it might increase teen use of marijuana is simply not
supported by recent studies.

House Republicans have long made kicking District government around a
veritable sport and, as Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has observed, often
do so to raise their standing among conservatives. And that would be
classic Andy Harris - to confidently impose his will on others with a
breathtaking level of moral certitude. As a state senator, his crusade
five years ago against students screening X-rated movies at the
University of Maryland, College Park included an unsuccessful effort
to tie state funding to the development of a college "porn policy."

In Annapolis, however, Dr. Harris was mostly a preening pest who made
sanctimonious speeches on the Senate floor that annoyed even his GOP
colleagues. In Washington, he's among enough like-minded right-wing
zealots to cause real trouble. Those who make their living in the
tourist trade on the Eastern Shore are just collateral damage, victims
of a congressman's runaway ego. The self-serving amendment is likely
to be tossed out by the Democrat-controlled Senate; a cure for the
district's bigger problems can only be achieved by its voters in November.
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MAP posted-by: Matt