Pubdate: Wed, 12 Nov 2014
Source: U.S. News & World Report (US)
Copyright: 2014 U.S. News & World Report
Contact: (202) 955-2685
Website: http://www.usnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/464
Author: Steven Nelson

POT LEGALIZATION: GATEWAY TO WHAT?

Advocates look to further reduce drug-related arrests, incarceration.

Shane Mckee, co-founder of Shango Premium Cannabis dispensary in
Portland, Ore., pulls a medical marijuana sample from a display casing
on Nov. 5. Oregon became the third state to legalize recreational pot
on election night, but it will be more than a year before the first
shops open.

By Steven Nelson Nov. 12, 2014 | 12:01 a.m. EST + More Buying
marijuana is now about as easy as shopping for liquor in Denver and
Seattle.

Soon, four states will regulate and tax sales of joints and pot
brownies, and drug policy campaigners see deeper reforms on the
horizon. Flush with new funding and optimistic that Americans have
turned a page, the American Civil Liberties Union plans to lead the
charge.

"What the marijuana legalization votes tell us is the door is open to
reconsidering all of our drug laws," says Alison Holcomb, national
director of the ACLU's new nationwide campaign against "mass
incarceration."

A $50 million grant from billionaire George Soros' Open Society
Foundations will fund the effort.

Holcomb wrote Washington state's pot legalization initiative, which
voters approved in 2012 along with a Colorado ballot measure.
Residents of Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia voted last
week to follow.

"These votes are not about whether or not voters think marijuana is
wonderful and that people should be using marijuana," Holcomb says.
"Instead they are really rejections of the laws that have existed for
the last four decades."

[READ: Pot Legalizers Look to 2016]

A map showing which states have legalized or decriminalized marijuana
is pictured. There are 18 states, along with the District of Columbia,
that have passed legislation to either legalize or decriminalize
marijuana. Marijuana continues to be illegal under federal law, but
the Obama administration has allowed broad leeway for states to allow
recreational sales, despite President Barack Obama's reluctance to
administratively change the 1970 congressional classification of pot
as among the most dangerous drugs.

The legalization votes, Holcomb says, "are a harbinger of a deeply
felt desire on the part of the American voters to do something
completely different."

The ACLU plans to stay on the sidelines of future pot legalization
campaigns - already supported by well-organized groups plotting about
a half-dozen ballot campaigns in 2016 - and to instead pour resources
into less-advanced fights for criminal justice reform.

One model the group hopes to replicate is California's Proposition 47,
approved by 58 percent of state voters last week to lower penalties
for drug possession and other nonviolent crimes. The proposition
allows for retroactive reclassification of felony convictions as
misdemeanors and sentencing reductions for current inmates.

Lenore Anderson, a co-author of Proposition 47 and executive director
of Californians for Safety and Justice, says she's aware that people
from other states are seeking to replicate the successful amendment.

"When it comes to criminal justice and drug policy, Americans are
thinking differently about these issues," she says. "The main message
for policymakers is some of the old ways of thinking around
prison-first policies and using the criminal justice system to deal
with something like drug addiction is something the public doesn't
think is wise anymore."

[ALSO: D.C. Votes to Legalize Marijuana]

Holcomb says the ACLU plans to support measures similar to Proposition
47 in 2016, and - ideally - measures that would not only de-felonize
but also decriminalize drug possession, meaning eliminating criminal
penalties like jail time for drugs other than marijuana. She says,
however, the group will not press to regulate the sale of all drugs
like marijuana.

Marijuana Through the Years

Most Americans behind bars are there for violating state laws, so
that's where the ACLU plans to focus.

"We would love to be able to have ballot initiatives in a number of
states that may look very similar to Proposition 47," Holcomb says.
"Hopefully we will be able to find states where we can go further and
say, 'Let's decriminalize the possession of drugs and let's talk about
what we can do to address drug use and abuse.'"

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, says
his organization would support decriminalization ballot measures in
any state where polling indicates majority support.

But, he says, broad drug decriminalization probably lacks such support
in any state-level jurisdiction aside from the District of Columbia.

Nadelmann says the pot legalization wins are "creating a sense of
momentum, but with the other drugs it's really about reducing
dependence on arrest and incarceration." He doubts there will be
majority support in the near future for legalizing drugs other than
marijuana, with the possible exception of certain hallucinogens.

Nadelmann's group, a major national leader on marijuana legalization
alongside the Marijuana Policy Project, has smaller steps in mind for
drug policy reform. It supported an initiative approved this month by
New Jersey voters to reform the state's bail system so that low-income
residents arrested on nonviolent charges be released pending trial and
plans to push for Good Samaritan laws to encourage the reporting of
drug overdoses and, ultimately, the establishment of harm-reduction
measures such as safe injection sites.

"Drug policy reform has evolved from being the black sheep of criminal
justice reform to being the cutting edge of criminal justice reform,"
he says. "Basically, a majority of Americans clearly believe there are
too many people behind bars for nonviolent, low-level drug offenses."

[MORE: Drugged Driving Perplexes Scientists, Lawmakers]

A bud of Maui Afghooey medical marijuana is displayed at the PureLife
Alternative Wellness Center on July 27, 2012 in Los Angeles. A graphic
quote from former DEA intelligence specialist Sean Dunagan reads:
"There's really no way to arrest and incarcerate our way out of the
problems associated with illegal drugs. It doesn't work and if it
doesn't work, common sense would dictate we look for alternatives."
About one in every 200 Americans was arrested for an alleged
drug-related offense in 2013, according to data released Monday by the
FBI. About 46.2 percent of those 1,501,043 drug-related arrests were
for marijuana.

The U.S. famously has the largest prison population in the world. A
September report from the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice
Statistics reports about 16 percent of the 1,314,900 inmates
warehoused in state facilities in December 2012 were convicted of drug
crimes. About 51 percent of the 193,775 federal prison inmates in
September 2013 were jailed on drug charges.

State-level action isn't the only front for drug policy reform.
There's federal-level sentencing and criminal justice reform efforts,
too, and the ACLU hopes to help make the issue a presidential election
year issue in 2016.

Localities are also creeping toward reform. New York City's government
announced Monday a discontinuation of using arrests to punish citizens
caught with small amounts of pot - opting instead for court summons -
following the July decision by Brooklyn's district attorney to stop
prosecuting most small-scale pot cases. District of Columbia voters'
decision to legalize weed will likely test the congressional waters
for more permissive policies early in 2015.

In addition to pushing particular reforms, the ACLU campaign will seek
to assemble better data. Some of the group's campaign will focus on
non-drug offenses.

As leading drug reform campaigners seek to either take a sledgehammer
or chisel to current U.S. drug laws, idealists foresee a
not-too-distant future where a comprehensive tax-and-regulate
structure is established for most currently illegal drugs, a scenario
that seemed implausible for marijuana not long ago.

"Legalizing all drugs and establishing a controlled and regulated
market is what would really, really put the cartels out of business,"
says Sean Dunagan, a former Drug Enforcement Administration
intelligence specialist.

Dunagan worked five years on the front lines of the war on drugs in
Guatemala and Mexico and came to the realization it's impossible to
smash the black market for illegal substances or permanently drive
down drug consumption.

"You can get cocaine in just about any school, there are heroin
arrests in small towns across the country," he says. "There's really
no way to arrest and incarcerate our way out of the problems
associated with illegal drugs. It doesn't work and if it doesn't work,
common sense would dictate we look for alternatives."

Dunagan, now affiliated with the group Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition, says the small user populations for drugs such as cocaine
compared with marijuana makes it difficult to see how significant
public pressure for legalization would mount in the near term, but
he's confident the day will come.

"For the government to do something that is so ineffective, and so
costly and so deadly, I can't believe that that policy would continue
to exist in perpetuity," he says.
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