Pubdate: Thu, 03 Nov 2016
Source: Tucson Weekly (AZ)
Copyright: 2016 Tucson Weekly
Contact:  http://www.tucsonweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/462
Author: Nick Meyers

OREGON CONGRESSMAN: LEGALIZE IT!

As Election Day Approaches, campaigns are making their closing
arguments.

Last week, Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenhauer, a Democrat who
represents Portland, made a trip to our desert town to support the
passing of Prop 205.

He spoke in favor of the proposition on the University of Arizona
campus, joined by local representatives such as Rep. Bruce Wheeler and
Rep. Matt Kopec as well as Sunnyside School District Board member
Daniel Hernandez, who is running for a District 2 spot in the state
House of Representatives.

Speakers touched on several issues about why they intend to vote "yes"
on Prop 205, giving a well-rounded perspective surrounding the support
for the initiative. Hernandez opened citing reasons close to him as
part of Sunnyside School District, focusing on the unequal effects
that marijuana laws may have on minority youth.

"It becomes a cycle, where unless we do something to break that cycle,
these kids aren't going to have the same opportunities as their white
counterparts," Hernandez said.

There were 1,416 arrests for marijuana in Arizona in 2014, per the
Arizona Department for Public Safety. Of those arrested, 13 percent
were black and 46 percent identified as Hispanic, compared to
Arizona's demographic distribution being 4.8 percent black and 30.7
percent Hispanic, per the United States Census Bureau.

This suggests concord with a trend seen across the country in which
people of minorities are arrested at higher rates than white people.
The ACLU says that blacks are 3.73 time more likely to be arrested for
marijuana than whites.

Wheeler took a more ideological stance.

"I don't think government should tell me whether I can smoke a joint
or not," he said. "Especially when you look at alcohol, which is legal
and kills hundreds, if not thousands of people every day. Marijuana
doesn't kill."

The alcohol comparison is drawn a lot in the argument for legalization
for the very reason Wheeler stated. Thought opponents often try to
link being high as an external factor in deaths such as traffic
accidents, no one has ever died from a marijuana overdose. Trust me,
Snoop Dogg has tried.

Stack that up against deaths related to and directly attributed to
alcohol, and the argument has some legitimacy. The Center for Disease
Control and Prevention estimates there are 2,200 alcohol poisoning
deaths per year. Taken with identical factors, it's a far cry for
marijuana to reach these kinds of numbers. Blumenhauer himself started
off with the disbelief that ending marijuana prohibition has taken
this long after voting for decriminalization in Oregon in 1973.

"If you would have told me back then that we'd still be fighting this
battle today, I wouldn't have believed it," he said.

He attributes the delay to Nixon's initiation of the War on Drugs, a
war that, by consensus, the drugs have won.

"The evidence is they are, if anything, more widely available,"
Blumenhauer said. "The prices are lower in many cases. We can't even
keep drugs out of prison. We've destabilized Central American
countries. The parade of unaccompanied migrant children fleeing
Central America is in no small measure related to what we've done with
this war on drugs."

Immigration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras has risen more
than from any other Central American countries according to the
Migration Policy Institute. El Salvador had the highest spike in 1980
while Honduras began to rapidly increase in 1990. This is partially
due to civil wars, but, more recently, to a shift in drug trafficking
routes through Central America after the U.S. began targeting drug
production in Colombia in the '90s.

He also pointed out the absurdity that marijuana is classified as more
dangerous than cocaine and meth on the Drug Enforcement Agencies drug
schedules. Marijuana is in the same schedule as heroin, and, much like
the alcohol argument, there are undoubtedly more deaths attributed to
cocaine, meth and heroin than marijuana.

For the complete version of this week's MMJ column, go to
tucsonweekly.com

"The decisive edge will be with millennial voters, and it's exactly
like marriage equality," he said. "Millennials, a decade ago, stopped
obsessing over marriage equality and accepted it, and your generation
drove acceptance. That's what's happening with marijuana."

We've looked at this data before. (See "Youth Pot," Sept. 15.) Pew
Research Center found that 68 percent of millennials support marijuana
legalization, nationally.

Blumenhauer cited recreational marijuana initiatives in Washington
D.C. and Florida, where millennials turned out in higher numbers than
usual.

"That is part of what needs to happen here over the course of the next
12 days," he said. "Being able to get younger voters out to the polls,
it'll make a difference up and down the ticket ... for personal
freedom, for justice in the legal system."

In large part, that's the question that voters need to answer next
week. Is the cost of arrests enough to outweigh an imperfect initiative?

Blumenhauer thinks so.

"Every state's different," he said. "Every pro
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MAP posted-by: Matt