xxdr_zombiexx

You've got to wonder what the feds are smoking

The Seattle TImes | Thursday, April 22, 2004

As courtroom dramas go, this was hardly a Perry Mason moment. A federal judge in Los Angeles gazed at Judy Osburn, a woman found guilty of growing marijuana for a West Hollywood cannabis club. "You are a principled person," U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz told her. "I don't consider you to be a threat or menace to society." He then gave Osburn a sentence of one year's probation.

Over 2,000 miles away in Akron, Ohio, a local judge tickled the wrist of a Catholic priest found to be raising 35 marijuana plants inside his rectory. The Rev. Richard Arko received two years of probation and community service.

And that's about all the passion our courts can summon for the crime of growing pot. The public seems equally apathetic. Nine states have passed laws allowing the use of marijuana with a doctor's approval. (Marijuana eases pain and the nausea caused by chemotherapy.)

In Nevada, meanwhile, voters are sure to consider a ballot initiative this November aimed at legalizing the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana — for any use, no questions asked. Observers predict a close vote.

The only person who still gets excited over marijuana these days seems to be U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. He's clearly solved the terrorism problem, so he has the spare time and resources to go after patients and priests who grow pot — and regular guys who grow pot in their backyards, like Travis Paulson of Lebanon, Ore.

Agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration last fall descended on Paulson and confiscated 104 marijuana plants — despite his Oregon-issued license to grow pot for medical use. The agents weren't really going after medical marijuana, a spokesman at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy explains. They were going after "the marijuana threat." OH-kay.

Elsewhere in marijuana news, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving a police dog's role in an Illinois pot arrest. It seems police in LaSalle County had stopped Roy Caballes for speeding. As the trooper and driver conferred, the pooch got real agitated over what his nose knew was in the trunk — $250,000 worth of pot. Caballes is now spending 12 years in jail for drug trafficking.

The Supreme Court is interested in whether the canine sniff constituted an unreasonable search. But taxpayers should be more intrigued by the large sums such cases cost them in trooper time, court facilities and long-term lodging for Caballes and his ilk. Wouldn't that dog's fine sniffer be better deployed looking for explosives?

All in all, the war on marijuana spends about $12 billion a year for eradication, law enforcement and jailing offenders, according to estimates from NORML, a group seeking to legalize marijuana. That's just on the federal side. State and local police make about 750,000 marijuana arrests a year. And forcing marijuana sales underground has created a nice fat market for narco-terrorists and ordinary criminals.

But wouldn't easing the ban on marijuana create a nation of potheads? There's scant evidence of that, according to research from the Netherlands, where marijuana is openly sold in coffee houses. A recent University of Amsterdam study came up with this interesting factoid: Only 2.5 percent of Dutch people over the age of 12 are regular users of marijuana, compared with 5 percent in the United States.

Finally, a few nice words for states' rights. Every state is allowed to monitor and tax the sale of alcoholic beverages. The same should apply to marijuana, argues the Marijuana Policy Project. This group wants pot regulated like alcohol — which means it would not be plopped on the candy counter next to the Snickers bars. If the people in Washington state want marijuana legalized and the people in Mississippi don't, then fine. Let each state plot its own course.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco recently ruled that use of medical marijuana is no business of the federal government if the pot didn't cross state lines and was not sold. But the feds seem determined to keep their snouts in, out of a distorted sense of morality and perhaps more potent love of money — $12 billion in taxpayer dough is a big pot of pork.



Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is fharrop@projo.com



Copyright 2004, The Providence Journal Co.

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camilleions

Maybe a new type of spiritual use can hold its place under the idea of Medical Marijuana Use? Seems almost similar to the magical properties marijuana holds of relieving stress. After all, spiritualism is used to relieve tension and provide a set of morals by which to follow, along with faith. Ultimately, that seems like alot of the reasons why "recreational users" seem to use marijuana. I'm fairly certain that priest did not just want to smoke up, get a case of the munchies, and vege out in front of the TV.

Being a fellow victim of the drug war, I anxiously await teh end of this drug war. I happened to be caught with a pipe, a vaporizer, and around one gram of marijuana in school, after a lead related to another incident, which i supposedly was involved in, which happened to be false. The snitch lied about an incident involving a knife and dealing great amount of drugs in the bathroom, and ultimately, AFTER searching me (disregarding my rights), the officials asked my teachers and found out that i actually was in class at the time of the incident. False accusations, but hey, they were able to "weed out" one of America's harshest criminals:
a 16 year old boy who maintained high grades and was an active participant in debate, chess, and who also helps around the house a whole lot. Might i add that my academic record was 100% clean, no violence and no negative teacher remarks. But i was going to harbor terrorism by carrying pot through school extremely concealed, which i was going to use that friday afternoon at a friends house.

The interesting thing is, 4 police cars were sent to retrieve a very peaceful herb smoking kid, and before we left school grounds to head towards the police station, 3 of the cop cars (including the one i was in) stopped in a pow-wow, in order for the others to learn what they were sent to the school for. The man asked me, and said, hey desperado, what did you do? I replied saying i had a pipe and 1 gram of pot on me. The other officers responded with "WHAT!? Thats it? We have important work to do! lets go boys!", and they left. I went ot the police station and was placed on $5000 bail! Doesn't that seem a bit excessive. God I love our country.

This is America my friends, land of oppurtunity and freedom, which can be taken away at at any and all times. Be patriotic, for our Federal government support this horrible genocide on civil rights.

TurbulentHigh

This is an interesting article, however he jumps from topic to topic. Thus making it seemingly weak because when speaking marijuana legalization you have to cover so many "obvious" solutions. I say "obvious" because I know many republicans, and religious groups are not capable of divergent thinking.

- TH421

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xxdr_zombiexx

I think the jumping around bit is because he is detialing the numerous and seemingly unrelated areas of life that marijuana prohibition affects.

Medical marijuana, state's rights, personal rights (Nevada relegalization effort), reefer madness affects many aspects of our lives and often we dont consider it.

The people in the mainstream still glued to the TV are clueless about this phenomenon mostly because all the "pro-side" to relegalization is filtered out of what they are allowed to see.

So it's a good article, I think, in that it does attempt to draw those issues together.

People need to be reminded their Governmnet BLOWS $12 Billion a year to protect us from you and me... and Tommy Chong.

But then...many of these people are still waiting for WMD's in Iraq, so willing to believe what the government tells them too......

people find it easier to swallow lies than to digest the truth.

Niteshift

State and local police make about 750,000 marijuana arrests a year.

Can I ask where they arrived at this number?

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CheebaMonkey

From the latest data available (2002), there were actually about 697,082 marijuana arrests.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/html/...04-NC.html#t41

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/html/...4-table29.html

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Niteshift

And even using those, it's still less than 750,000 is it not? So where did they arrive at the number from?

And that number is people charged. The number convicted is lower and it doesn't take into account at all that many were charged with other crimes, non drug as well.

Bellatrix

Try the NORML website - perhaps they have an explanantion as to how they arrived at the number.

The point is not the number of people convicted. It takes precious time, money and resources to track down and arrest or even just search and detain someone. Law enforcement shouldn't have to waste these resources looking for something as benign as marijuana. I think that's the point of the article, not necessarily the number of people convicted (that could be a whole other article in itself).

Turbulenthigh and doc zombie also have a good point - the article is a bit convuluted, but only becuase it's trying to cover so much. Anti-marijuana prohibition effects so many different parts of our lives a lot of people don't even realize it. The drug sniffing dogs at road checks, borders and airports, the tax dolars that are wasted on prohibition propaganda that could be better spent elsewhere, the pesticide dumped on marijuana crops that leeches into the soil and groundwater. A personal example - the other day, my co-worker was saying that she wold refuse to stop for a cop if she was driving alone on a deserted road. I sympathized. There are all kinds of horror stories about cops using the "we're looking for drugs" excuse to corner and sexually assualt someone. These are the kinds of things that never get reported. All you have to do is be walking down the street for that to happen.

The point the author makes about states rights is a good one. How many other people out there share the sentiment that yet another function of the drug war is to bring states "to heel" under the federal government? The "do it or we'll cut your funding" ploy is also used by the feds against other countries that depend on US aid.

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kevstermon

the war on marijuana spends about $12 billion

12 billion here, 12 billion there and sooner or later you're talking about real money.
Only 2.5 percent of Dutch people over the age of 12 are regular users of marijuana, compared with 5 percent in the United States.

So assuming the under 12 population at 70 million or so, 5 percent of the remaining 200 million is 10 million people.

From the latest data available (2002), there were actually about 697,082 marijuana arrests.

So that would equal about one in twelve of the regular users.

Quite the value, too bad we can't catch one out of twelve terrorists.

Niteshift

The point is not the number of people convicted. It takes precious time, money and resources to track down and arrest or even just search and detain someone. Law enforcement shouldn't have to waste these resources looking for something as benign as marijuana. I think that's the point of the article, not necessarily the number of people convicted (that could be a whole other article in itself).

Something yuo may not be aware of........ most pot arrests aren't really "looked for", they are simply found.

Stop a car for speeding, smell pot. Arrest a guy for shoplifting, find pot. It's not that pot was the goal, it just happens.

Likewise, it is only fair to look at something beyond just number of people charged. If I arrest a guy for robbery and he has pot on him, he gets charged with robbery and possession. 1 person, two charges. Meanwhile, he gets counted as BOTH a robbery arrest and a possession arrest. When looking at strictly numbers, it looks like 2 people were arrested, but they weren't in reality.

Then you have people with multiple charges for the same offense.

So when you look at 697,082 arrests for pot, you're not actually talking about 697,082 different people.

So, not only are we not talking about 750,000 people, as the NORML numbers would suggest, we're also not talking about 697,082 people. The number is less.

I'm not arguing abuot whether the law is right or wrong. If you feel it's wrong, fine. But I don't think using artifically high numbers, or unfairly presented numbers, is really the way to go.