Pubdate: Sun, 15 Feb 2015
Source: Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Copyright: 2015 The Jerusalem Post
Contact: http://info.jpost.com/C002/Services/Feedback/editors.html
Website: http://www.jpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/516
Author: Rebecca Spence
Page: 17

LE'OR AIMS TO PUT MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION ON THE JEWISH AGENDA

"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?"

That was President Richard Nixon speaking to his top aide, H.R. "Bob" 
Haldeman, during a recorded White House meeting back in 1971.

Fast forward some four decades, a new nonprofit group based in 
Portland, Ore., is hoping to prove Nixon right. Le'Or, founded about 
a year ago with seed funding from Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap Company, 
wants to convince American Jews that ending marijuana prohibition 
belongs on the progressive Jewish communal agenda alongside marriage 
equality and immigration reform.

"Our goal is to erode the stigma, so that the Jewish community at 
large can see that supporting marijuana legalization is not just the 
right thing to do, it's the Jewish thing to do," said Roy Kaufmann, 
who founded Le'Or with his wife, Claire. The Oregon governor's 
speechwriter by day, the Israeli-born Kaufmann, 36, is a staunch 
opponent of America's decadeslong War on Drugs. Launched by Nixon in 
the 1970s and expanded during the Reagan era, the ongoing drug war 
has resulted in an unprecedented number of US citizens - and a 
disproportionate number of African-American males - being sent to 
prison for drug-related offenses.

Part of the answer, legalization advocates say, is to make marijuana 
a controlled substance on par with alcohol and cigarettes. In 
November, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., joined Colorado and 
Washington state in legalizing recreational cannabis use. The four 
states will tax and regulate sales of the plant, while DC's law, 
which sanctioned possession only, has yet to take effect following a 
congressional move to block its implementation.

Meanwhile, medical marijuana is now legal in 23 US states. While 
cannabis is still prohibited under federal law, as the tide shifts 
toward legalization, even Congress is softening its stance. Last 
December's government spending bill included a bipartisan amendment 
that blocks the US Justice Department from using funds to target 
patients or collectives in states with medical marijuana programs.

The seeds of Le'Or - "to illuminate" in Hebrew - were planted when 
the Kaufmanns began to lament the lack of Jewish communal involvement 
in pushing for marijuana legalization.

"There's a disconnect between the civil rights issue and the number 
of Jewish people who, let's be honest, enjoy the cannabis plant," 
said Claire Kaufmann, now a marketing and branding consultant for the 
burgeoning cannabis industry. "It seems to me to be a contradiction."

Specifically, it outraged the couple that while white Americans - 
themselves included - could casually smoke marijuana and get away 
with it, their black counterparts were far too often arrested and 
incarcerated for the same low-level crime.

A business school graduate and the mother of three young children, 
Kaufmann, 35, said she never imagined she'd wind up working in the 
marijuana industry. The Portland resident became involved, she said, 
because of her commitment to drug policy reform, not to reap the kind 
of profits that have given rise to a new crop of cannabis 
entrepreneurs in what has been dubbed the "green rush."

"My real passion is the racial and economic injustices," said Claire 
Kaufmann, who blogs about the industry at rebrandingcannabis. com. "I 
see marijuana legalization as the gateway issue to a much larger and 
more uncomfortable issue around prison sentencing reform."

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, black people use drugs 
at about the same rates as whites but are three to five times more 
likely to be arrested as a result.

In 2012, Roy Kaufmann led the first campaign to legalize marijuana in 
Oregon. He was struck by how few rabbis and Jewish communal leaders 
jumped on board. After the failed bid, he turned to Dr. Bronner's to 
back his idea for a Jewish pro-cannabis group.

Dr. Bronner's has played a leading role in hemp and marijuana 
legalization efforts since 2001, when David Bronner, the company's 
president and grandson of the spiritually minded German-Jewish 
soapmaker, launched a successful lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement 
Agency to allow hemp imports into the United States. The Vista, 
Calif.-based company uses non-psychoactive hemp oil imported from 
Canada in its all-natural line of soaps.

While Bronner, 41, was raised Protestant, he also grew up reciting 
the Jewish Shema prayer and said he feels a strong connection to his 
Jewish roots. His grandfather's universalist "All-One" message - 
touted on famously wacky soap labels with references to Rabbi Hillel 
and Jesus - remains at the core of the company's progressive philosophy.

"The major drug reform groups in the country are already led by Jews, 
and they're doing it out of a deep-seated commitment to social 
justice," Bronner said. "Furthermore, Israel has been a real pioneer 
in cannabis."

One of the world's only countries with a national medical marijuana 
program, Israel has long taken the lead on marijuana research. THC, 
the psychoactive compound in the cannabis plant, was first identified 
in 1964 by Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam, for example. And just 
this year, an Israeli research company announced that it had 
developed an oral patch so that medical marijuana users can ingest 
the drug without inhaling smoke. The patch was based on research 
conducted at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Bronner himself helped jump-start Israel's $40-million-year medical 
marijuana industry more than a decade ago when he donated $50,000 to 
the country's first dispensary, Tikkun Olam, which takes its name 
from the Jewish mystical tradition of repairing the world. In 2014, 
the Magic Soap Company donated more than $100,000 to both the Oregon 
and Alaska legalization initiatives, and some $250,000 to the DC 
campaign. But Bronner's activism has been more than monetary. In 
2009, he planted hemp seeds in front of the Drug Enforcement Agency's 
D.C. headquarters to protest the US ban on hemp farming, and three 
years later he locked himself in a steel cage with a dozen industrial 
hemp plants - they contain only trace amounts of THC - in front of 
the White House.

Last year, President Barack Obama signed into law a farm bill that 
included an amendment to allow industrial hemp farming for research 
purposes. The amendment was co-sponsored by Jared Polis, a Jewish 
Democratic congressman from Colorado who recently introduced a 
bipartisan bill to allow hemp production for commercial purposes as well.

As Bronner noted, the leaders of many of America's major drug policy 
reform groups are also Jewish. Among the organizations they helm are 
the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a 
nonprofit that studies the therapeutic potential of psychedelics and 
marijuana and was founded by the Jewish Chicago native Rick Doblin. 
There's also the Drug Policy Alliance, whose founder and executive 
director, Ethan Nadelmann, is the son of a prominent 
Reconstructionist rabbi and links policy work to "the broader Jewish 
tradition of fighting for social justice."

Jewish advocacy groups, however, have largely hung back on issues of 
marijuana legalization and drug policy reform. Those contacted by 
JTA, including Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice and the 
American Jewish Committee, which lobbies Congress on behalf of issues 
such as immigration reform and marriage equality, declined to comment.

But according to Doug Kahn, executive director of the Jewish 
Community Relations Council of San Francisco, "the lack of engagement 
on this issue by the organized Jewish community is not because it's a 
taboo issue, it's because we have to set priorities. And this issue 
has not emerged as a priority."

Ethan Felson, vice president and general counsel of the Jewish 
Council for Public Affairs - the umbrella body of local community 
relations councils - agreed with Kahn's assessment, but added that as 
the marijuana legalization issue becomes more prevalent, the local 
councils will have to take a closer look.

"I'm not aware of a lot of communities that have delved deeply at 
this point," Felson said. "But it's likely that over the next few 
years that will change."

Within the organized Jewish community, however, the Reform movement 
has been a marked exception. In 1999, Women of Reform Judaism passed 
a resolution in support of medical marijuana that four years later 
was adopted by the full Union for Reform Judaism. More recently, the 
Reform movement's public affairs arm, the Religious Action Center, 
has lobbied Congress on behalf of legislation reforming prison sentencing.

"The core priority for us has been addressing the sentencing 
disparity between white Americans and black Americans who are 
convicted for drug-related offenses," said Barbara Weinstein, the 
RAC's associate director.

For some prominent Jews, however, it's not merely about whether or 
not to prioritize other issues, but about actively working to block 
marijuana legalization. In Florida, where a November bid to legalize 
medical marijuana lost by 3 percentage points, Jewish billionaire 
Sheldon Adelson pumped $5 million into the campaign to defeat its 
passage. The casino mogul's Israeli-born wife, Miriam, is a drug 
addiction specialist who runs a rehabilitation center in Las Vegas 
and believes that marijuana is a "gateway drug" to harder, more 
dangerous substances - a belief that legalization advocates dispute, 
citing studies to the contrary.

But if Le'Or has its way, Florida could indeed legalize medical 
marijuana in the next election cycle - and California might well take 
the next step and allow recreational use.

"We're talking about some of the biggest Jewish communities in the 
US," Roy Kaufmann said. "I look at 2016 and I think, 'This is an 
opportunity to start building something now.'" - JTA
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom