A legislator who couldn't get an interim study last fall on the benefits of medical marijuana has filed two measures to ease the state's tough marijuana laws.

Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Forest Park, has filed separate bills to establish a medical marijuana program in Oklahoma and to reduce the penalties for possessing small amounts of marijuana.

Senate Bill 902 would direct the State Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision to develop and adopt rules that allow people with debilitating medical conditions to use marijuana with approval from their physicians and to establish fees for the "licensing, production, distribution and consumption" of marijuana for medical purposes.

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The war on marijuana is going up in smoke, and it's about time. There is no bigger waste of money and resources in all law enforcement.

Failure is too polite a description for the long campaign to eliminate the pot trade in the United States. A colossal flop is what it is. After four decades and billions spent, marijuana is easier to get, and more potent, than ever.

More than 40 percent of all Americans over 12 have tried it, and at least 30 million people smoke it every year. The most recent national drug survey found that 18.1 million Americans had used it during the previous month.

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Michelle Alexander is a law professor at Ohio State University who has recently written a book titled "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." In that work she argues that the national "War on Drugs" has resulted in many African American and Latino men being subject to discrimination of the type that is similar to the unequal treatment African Americans received when legal segregation was the law of the land in most of the states in the South.

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KINGFISHER - The four reasons Patricia Spottedcrow most wanted out of prison were back in her arms Thursday afternoon, after their mother was released on parole.

Her children are 11, 6, 5 and 3 years old now. The youngest was just 1 when Spottedcrow began her prison sentence two years ago.

If Gov. Mary Fallin hadn't approved Spottedcrow's parole and if the Pardon and Parole Board hadn't agreed to early consideration for her case, her children might have all been teenagers by the time she got out.

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The voters of Colorado and Washington have made it clear the federal government can no longer get away with confusing the drug war's collateral damage with a comparatively harmless plant. If the goal of marijuana prohibition is to subsidize violent drug cartels, prohibition is a success. The drug war distorts supply and demand dynamics so that big money grows on little trees.

If the goal of marijuana prohibition is to deter use, prohibition is a failure. The United States has double the rate of use as the Netherlands, where marijuana is legally available. The criminalization of Americans who prefer marijuana to martinis has no basis in science. The war on marijuana consumers is a failed cultural inquisition, not an evidence-based public health campaign. It's time to stop the arrests and end marijuana prohibition.

Robert Sharpe, Arlington, Va. Sharpe is policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy in Washington, D.C.(www.csdp.org).

[end]

print State's marijuana advocates will have to wait to be heard

Marijuana advocates will have to wait another year to try to get their discussion in front of Oklahoma legislators after a committee chairman announced this week he would not schedule the interim study.

Following Arkansas' near passing of medical marijuana on Nov. 6, Oklahoma marijuana advocates - including the leader of the Tulsa branch of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws - were in high hopes of getting an interim study approved to discuss bills put forward by state Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, aiming at legalizing marijuana for medicinal use.

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Small-time marijuana use will soon be legal in Colorado and Washington state. Sort of.

This month voters in those states approved ballot measures permitting possession of up to an ounce of pot. But the federal government has not changed its policy, which labels the drug an illegal substance. Members of Congress introduced legislation Nov. 16 that would allow state marijuana rules to preempt federal ones. But that, in effect, would resemble federal legalization, and it's unlikely to pass anytime soon.

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A State Official Nixes the Research, Saying Legalization Would Oppose Federal Law.

Marijuana advocates will have to wait another year to try to get their discussion in front of Oklahoma legislators after a committee chairman announced this week he would not schedule the interim study.

Following Arkansas' near passing of medical marijuana on Nov. 6, Oklahoma marijuana advocates - including the leader of the Tulsa branch of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws - were in high hopes of getting an interim study approved to discuss bills put forward by state Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, aiming at legalizing marijuana for medicinal use.

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Colorado voters this month legalized recreational use of marijuana, endorsing the smoking of one substance while strongly discouraging the smoking of tobacco. Recent policy battles in Oklahoma have focused on becoming more like Colorado when it comes to tobacco regulation. Oklahoma is one of only a few states where city regulation of tobacco use can't exceed state limits.

11/20/2012 House Speaker Pro Tem-elect Mike Jackson, R-Enid, is under fire because he raised money for a political action committee that provided $11,000 to Republican... In 2011, Gary Cox, director of the Oklahoma City-County Health Department, argued for granting cities greater regulatory control of tobacco use by citing the Colorado city of Pueblo. In 2003 that community required all workplaces to be smoke free. Within 18 months, Cox said, Pueblo's heart attack hospitalizations declined 41 percent.

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TAHLEQUAH - As voters across the country registered their opinions on who should occupy the White House, the majority of voters in Colorado and Washington said as far as they're concerned, it's OK to inhale.

Marijuana legalization measures, for recreational use, were passed last week in both states.

Medical marijuana is already legal in both states, but private possession or consumption was not, until the Nov. 6 election.

According to Colorado's Amendment 64, or the Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol Act of 2012, the measure will alter the state constitution to provide for regulation of the Schedule 1 drug.

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Legalizing marijuana a matter of compassion

Thirty or so years ago, cancer claimed the life of one of my favorite aunts.

Aunt Dorothy was a delightful Oklahoma born and bred woman who migrated in the 1950s to suburban San Francisco, where she and my grocer uncle lived in the coolest little house overlooking the Pacific.

Her death was agonizing. The treatments not only failed to arrest the cancer, but also made her incredibly nauseous. In a desperate quest to improve her quality of life, her family embraced the only thing that provided relief: marijuana.

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The drug war (reference column Sept. 16) is largely a war on marijuana smokers.

In 2010, there were 853,839 marijuana arrests in the United States, almost 90 percent for simple possession.

At a time when state and local governments are laying off police, firefighters and teachers, this country continues to spend enormous public resources criminalizing Americans who prefer marijuana to martinis. The end result of this ongoing culture war is not necessarily lower rates of use.

The U.S. has higher rates of marijuana use than the Netherlands, where marijuana is legally available. Decriminalization is a long overdue step in the right direction. Taxing and regulating marijuana would render the drug war obsolete.

As long as organized crime controls distribution, marijuana consumers will come into contact with sellers of hard drugs like methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin. This "gateway" is a direct result of marijuana prohibition.

Policy analyst,

Common Sense for Drug Policy

Washington, D.C.

[end]

Darrell Weaver still remembers the first time he listened in on an illegal drug transaction. He was a rookie law enforcement agent and he couldn't believe such things were going on in rural Oklahoma.

"My parents would have killed us if we were involved in something like that. I had no idea what was going on out there," he said.

Friday marked 25 years since Weaver began as an agent with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics. He chose police work after the 1984 bank robbery in Geronimo, Oklahoma where robbers killed four persons. "I knew from then on what I wanted to do," he said.

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Regarding "DA accuses board of expediting release of ineligible inmates" (News, Aug. 9): The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board was clearly trying to right a wrong when it pardoned Patricia Spottedcrow, who was given an unjustly harsh sentence, especially for a first-time offender. She was incarcerated for selling $31 worth of marijuana and got a 12-year sentence. Yes, her action was illegal, but she already paid the price in time served. Spottedcrow was sent to prison instead of given the chance to participate in a women's program for nonviolent offenders. Her children were denied her presence as she was sentenced to a prison at a distance.

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EDMOND - People should not have to fight their government in order to ease their pain, said Richard Prawdzienski, an Independent state Senate District 41 candidate. He supports amending state law to allow for medical marijuana use for Oklahomans, he said.

Prawdzienski will face Republican incumbent state Sen. Clark Jolley Nov. 6 in the general election. Both men live in Edmond.

Now retired, Prawdzienski served in the U.S. Marine Corps and worked in logistics at Tinker Air Force Base. He also has been active in the Libertarian Party of Oklahoma and is former chairman of the group.

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Ada - Growers who attempted to cultivate an estimated 6,000 "high-quality" marijuana plants on a patch of land north of Ada didn't just pick the wrong area for their illegal enterprise - they picked the wrong state.

"Our drug eradication program is really a model for the entire country. Agents from all over the country come to our school," Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics spokesman Mark Woodward said Tuesday afternoon.

Approximately 35 OBN agents and another 20 Chickasaw Nation Lighthorse Police and District 22 Task Force officers - acting on an anonymous tip - had discovered the plants. Some of the marijuana plants were 6 to 8 feet tall and had a street value estimated at $9 million.

"That's evidence that the people (involved in growing the drug) weren't from around here," Woodward said. "If they had known how good we are at what we do, they probably wouldn't have come to Oklahoma to grow their marijuana."

[end]

In California, sandwich-board walkers advertise where to get legal marijuana for medicinal reasons and what symptoms will get you a prescription.

In Oklahoma, a proponent of medical marijuana can't get a hearing from the conservative state legislature on her bill. Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, remains optimistic.

"The legislative process moves slowly. It's taken seven years just to get a study, and even that's not a given," Johnson said. "I'm an eternal optimist, and I'm optimistic that it will get a hearing one day. Things are changing.

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Sen. Constance Johnson Believes Attitudes Are Changing.

OKLAHOMA CITY - A longtime proponent of medicinal marijuana, state Sen. Constance Johnson, acknowledges she has few open advocates in the conservative Oklahoma Legislature.

But the Oklahoma City Democrat said she remains optimistic that attitudes toward easing Oklahoma's tough marijuana laws are shifting, and she said her hopes are buoyed by the possibility of the Republicancontrolled Senate approving a study on the benefits of medicinal marijuana.

Johnson, D-OklahomaCity, has introduced a medicinal marijuana bill every year since she was first elected in 2005, but has yet to receive a hearing in committee. Now she is petitioning the Republican chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to allow a study before the Legislature reconvenes in February.

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Recently, a brave soul introduced a bill in the Oklahoma Legislature to legalize medical marijuana. Without going into the merits of such an undertaking, or its broader implications and possibilities, I would like to comment on one group strongly opposed to any such legislation: the drug cartels and street gangs.

Anyone opposing the legalization of marijuana has the narco-terrorists block firmly at their back. They know any intelligent revision of the current criminal statutes would do the most harm imaginable to their existence. Certainly more so than any quasi-military or police efforts are doing.

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Sen. Patrick Anderson, R-Enid, said Saturday he would oppose a proposed interim legislative study into the medicinal use of marijuana.

"I don't support legalizing marijuana, and I don't think the Oklahoma legislature will support it," Anderson said.

Anderson's comments were in response to a petition from Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Forest Park, filed with the Senate Health and Human Services Committee for an interim study into legalizing the medicinal use of the drug.

Johnson's petition is the latest in a long string of attempts to bring the medicinal marijuana issue before the full Senate. Johnson has introduced a medicinal marijuana bill every year since she first was elected in 2005, but has yet to receive a hearing in committee.

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