Pubdate: Mon, 09 May 2016
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2016 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Joe Garofoli

SUPPORTERS OF LEGAL POT STRIVE TO WIN OVER FAITHFUL

The reason marijuana might actually be legalized for adult 
recreational use in California this November is because professionals 
- - not stoners - are running the campaign this time.

This crew is so straight that the wackiest guy to speak at the 
campaign's kickoff event the other day in San Francisco was Rep. Dana 
Rohrabacher, a Republican from Orange County who used to be a 
speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan.

Yet even though the 68-year-old Rohrabacher told me he hasn't fired 
up since he was 23, it sounded as if he might have caught some 
secondhand caught some secondhand smoke out on Post Street when he 
compared the fight to legalize marijuana to Reagan going to Germany 
and telling Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down that wall."

"Today, I think we're sending the message that the walls of cannabis 
prohibition and this tyranny that our people have faced are coming 
down," Rohrabacher said. "Join us in tearing down this wall."

'Softening' on legalization

There's an even bigger wall that supporters of legalization need to 
scale. It's the wall surrounding churches in many African American 
and Latino communities. Getting over that wall will be one of the 
keys to winning the legalization campaign being steered by a 
combination of political pros and longtime advocates.

Six years ago, when California NAACP Chairwoman Alice Huffman was one 
of the few black leaders to support the failed Proposition 19 
legalization measure, she couldn't even get inside African American 
churches to talk about the issue. A group of black leaders led by a 
Sacramento pastor called for her ouster, as they wondered why "would 
the state NAACP advocate for blacks to stay high?" Their opposition 
closed many church doors to Huffman and other legalization advocates.

"They thought I was crazy," Huffman told me the other day.

Church leaders told her marijuana was a gateway to harder drugs (not 
true) and blamed much of the violence in their communities on weed.

"I understand that they're fearful. They see people die. They see 
people incarcerated," Huffman said. "But what they were doing was 
miseducating a lot of people about cannabis."

She and others have spent the past few years explaining how African 
Americans are nearly four times as likely (and Latinos 2.5 times) to 
to be arrested for drug use and possession.

Slowly, over the past few years, Huffman and others say there has 
been what they call "a softening" on legalization. With everyone from 
Black Lives Matter supporters to presidential candidate Sen. Bernie 
Sanders now talking about mass incarceration and the federal 
government's failed war on drugs, more people are willing to at least 
listen to arguments in favor of legalizing weed.

"I say 'regulating,' " Huffman corrects, "because 'legalizing' is too 
hard for them to hear. It makes the fear factor come forth."

Drug war's long-term effects

Now, roughly a dozen pastors statewide are actually supporting the 
legalization campaign.

"I hear a whole lot of people say, 'The war on drugs destroyed our 
community' - they weren't saying that in 2010," Huffman said. "We 
felt like we've educated them - to a point."

Huffman said church leaders still "might not come right and say, 'Oh, 
we're with you, we love you, we're on board.' But that's not what I 
want. What I want is for them not to miseducate their members, so 
that they can make their own choice. I just want them to say, 'We'll 
pass this on to our members.' And that's been real progress."

The challenge is harder in Latino religious communities. The Catholic 
Church, influential in the Latino community, opposed Prop. 19. Some 
legalization advocates remember seeing priests in East Los Angeles 
handing out anti-Prop. 19 leaflets six years ago. And it's more 
difficult for advocates to tap into their Pentecostal and evangelical 
churches, which aren't networked to the degree African American churches are.

Now, there's hope that the Catholic Church will remain neutral on 
this year's Adult Use of Marijuana Act, said Armando Gudino, who 
organizes in the Latino community for the Drug Policy Alliance. He 
hears from parents who are comforted seeing that teen marijuana use 
remained flat in Colorado after that state legalized weed.

"People in the Latino community are realizing that the war on drugs 
is creating more harm in their community than legalization would," 
Gudino said. "You can be caught with a joint - and living here with a 
green card for 30 years - and be deported."

Unusual coalition

People also see how mass incarceration is hurting their community, he 
said. "Once you start that conversation, you're just a few sentences 
away from legalization."

Huffman is feeling confident that if church communities continue to 
soften, legalization could pass - with the help of what she called 
"one of the most unusual coalitions I've ever been a part of. You'd 
never get me up there with that Republican guy on anything else."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom