Pubdate: Sat, 21 Mar 2015
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2015 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Josh Barro

Grow and Give

WHERE MARIJUANA IS LEGAL BUT ISN'T FOR SALE

It sounds like an idea a stoner might come up with.

In Washington, D.C., it's now legal to possess marijuana, to grow it, 
to smoke it and to give it away. But you're not allowed to trade in 
it. You can give your neighbor up to an ounce, but if he gives you 
money or even bakes you a pie in exchange, that's illegal.

The District of Columbia has legalized marijuana - but is trying not 
to create a market in marijuana. It's aiming for a gift economy, not 
unlike what you might experience at Burning Man, but permanently.

Other legalizing jurisdictions are taking a more traditional 
approach. Colorado and Washington State have both established 
regulated markets in marijuana that look a lot like those many states 
have to regulate and tax alcohol. District of Columbia council 
members were expected to do the same until Congress passed a law 
barring them from spending money to regulate marijuana. That left the 
city with noncommercial legalization as its only option after voters 
repealed the law prohibiting marijuana in the district last November.

The district's lawmakers aren't happy about the process, but maybe 
they should be pleased about the outcome. Mark Kleiman, a leading 
expert on drug policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, 
has been arguing for Washington's "grow-and-give" approach for years. 
He is one of several researchers affiliated with the RAND Corporation 
who have been urging states to look for intermediate options between 
prohibition and commercial legalization. They have urged states to 
consider approaches like nonprofit cooperatives, a government 
monopoly on marijuana production or a grow-your-own rule like the one 
Washington has ended up with, essentially by accident.

Drug prohibition imposes many costs. People go to jail for using and 
trading in drugs, causing major disruption to individuals' lives and 
to communities. Illegal markets breed crime, including violent crime, 
because people in the drug business can't use the courts to enforce 
contracts and settle disputes. And prohibition reduces access to a 
product that many people enjoy and use responsibly - though it's not 
that hard to buy marijuana even where it's illegal.

But Mr. Kleiman warns that full-scale commercial legalization comes 
with costs of its own. The main risk is that marijuana businesses 
will - as alcohol and tobacco companies did - successfully market 
their products to heavy users who would be better off using less, and 
that they will resist regulations that discourage problem use.

A recent RAND research brief says 80 percent of marijuana consumption 
is by daily and near-daily users. "So roughly 80 percent of marijuana 
companies' profits would come from marketing to such heavy users, 
about half of whom currently meet clinical criteria for substance use 
disorders (either with marijuana itself or another substance, such as 
alcohol)," it concluded.

Supporters of the Washington approach hope the city will enjoy the 
benefits of legalization without creating a well-organized commercial 
machine that encourages people to smoke marijuana. "It's very 
elegant, and it does have a lot of merit," said David Frum, the 
conservative political commentator and an adviser to Smart Approaches 
to Marijuana, a group that opposes legalization but favors other drug 
law reforms. "It does seek to thread a path between the evils of 
having an industry that creates a lot of dependency and, on the other 
hand, having a lot of people in jail for issues that are 
fundamentally of dependency and not moral failing." Continue reading 
the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Still, Mr. Frum opposes the Washington model, preferring to simply 
decriminalize it and continue to ban production and distribution of 
marijuana. He fears that a noncommercial model will not be 
sustainable: Local officials will fall under the sway of people in 
the marijuana business who want the opportunity to make profits in a 
commercial market. He notes that producers in Colorado have already 
been fiercely resisting restrictions on edible marijuana products, 
even though they may be attractive to children and lead some 
consumers (including New York Times columnists) to accidentally 
overindulge. Calls for commercial legalization are also likely to 
appeal to lawmakers because commercial legalization generates 
marijuana tax revenue.

Mr. Kleiman shares Mr. Frum's fear that commercial legalization 
advocates will win the day (they've won in the last few states where 
marijuana has been on the ballot, after all). But the question 
remains: What's the alternative?

"The only hope to beat commercial legalization is with a successful 
noncommercial legalization," Mr. Kleiman says, "because prohibition is over."

While Mr. Frum objects to "grow-and-give" for opening a dangerous 
door, some libertarians object that it doesn't go far enough. 
Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote in Reason that Washington, D.C., would 
continue to have a black market in marijuana, as most people would 
continue to buy illegally because growing your own was inconvenient. 
She also notes consumers won't get the quality control that comes 
with a legalized market.

Mr. Kleiman agrees with Ms. Mangu-Ward that Washington won't have a 
true gift economy in marijuana. He expects small-scale illegal sales 
of the drug to continue, but he isn't necessarily bothered by it.

"I kind of distinguish between flagrant and discreet drug dealing," 
he says. "Discreet drug dealing happens in multipurpose locations 
indoors. Flagrant drug dealing occurs outdoors or in dedicated 
locations" - think street corners and crack houses. "Discreet drug 
dealing doesn't attract much crime, while a flagrant dealer is a target."

In other words, Washington's reform isn't about making the marijuana 
trade truly, totally noncommercial. It's about making the commercial 
aspects of the marijuana trade mostly harmless, occurring discreetly 
inside people's homes, without attendant violence or mass marketing. 
Mr. Kleiman compares the issue to gambling - your home poker game 
might be illegal, but isn't likely to cause violent crime or draw 
government attention in the way a full-scale gambling operation might.

That's a theory - but it's one we'll get to test over the next few 
years. If Mr. Kleiman is right about noncommercial legalization, 
Washington should find success. "You really want to see decreased 
criminal justice involvement, you want to see an absence of flagrant 
public dealing and you want to not see the long supply chains and the 
marketing," he said. Then, on the usage side, you want to see that 
problem use hasn't risen. You can measure that through surveys, 
though he also proposes a couple of novel ways, including collecting 
samples from the city's sewer system or of hair clippings from 
barbershops and salons, to measure the population-level amount of 
cannabis metabolites showing up in urine and hair.

If the hair samples start showing a lot more T.H.C. metabolites, 
we'll know Washington residents are smoking significantly more weed. 
Of course, most of those users aren't problem users, but because the 
problem users have the highest usage, Mr. Kleiman argues the quantity 
of metabolites should be a good proxy for the total amount of problem use.

We often hear that state and local governments are "laboratories of 
democracy," but in this case, that will be more literally true than usual.

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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom