IKILL3RI

April 03, 2009 at 15:30:34 PT
By Rick Holmes, GateHouse News Service
Source: Norwich Bulletin

A New Conversation on Drug Prohibition

justice USA -- A year ago, a drug policy activist I was interviewing turned the tables on me. "What do you think it would take to get Americans to start talking seriously about legalizing pot?" he asked.

I said maybe if some high profile celebrity got caught smoking marijuana, someone you never would have suspected -- preferably a Republican. Catch Nancy Reagan with a joint, I said, and the national conversation about drug prohibition would change.

Michael Phelps is no Nancy Reagan. But the conversation seemed to shift a little when photos surfaced of him hitting on a bong at a party on a South Carolina campus in February. There was the usual faux outrage to begin with, with commentators clucking about role models and talk of Phelps' endorsement contracts going up in smoke. There were the usual hippie-dippy jokes, with dated Cheech-and-Chong references. Phelps made the ritual apologies and promised never to do it again.

But then there was a bit of a backlash. People started saying things out loud that might have been whispered a decade ago, like, "What's the big deal? A 23-year-old kid smoked pot at a frat house. What else is new?" The sheriff who launched a big-deal investigation of the incident found himself ridiculed on the editorial pages of South Carolina newspapers.

Phelps didn't change the conversation, but he reflected the way it is changing. So did the message sent last November by Massachusetts voters, who, without having been pushed by an expensive campaign, voted two-to-one to decriminalize marijuana.

America's drug policy has been frozen in place for 35 years by culture war politics born of the '60s. But if you listen hard, you can hear the ice breaking up.

Consider the Rockefeller Drug Laws, enacted in 1973 when the "war on drugs" was still young. Mandatory minimum sentences -- as high as 15 years to life -- were set for possessing even small quantities of drugs. New prisons were built and filled, with thousands of non-violent drug users and small-time dealers. Other states followed suit, committing America to treating addiction and recreational drug use as a law enforcement problem, not a public health problem.

So now, with 5 percent of the world's population, we have 25 percent of the world's prisoners: 2.3 million behind bars, with more than 5 million more on probation or parole. Our incarceration rate is nearly five times the average worldwide.

"Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different - and vastly counterproductive," Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., wrote last week in Parade magazine. "Obviously, the answer is the latter."

What's been missing all these years in our conversation about drugs are reputable voices pointing out the obvious: All this incarceration has done nothing to reduce the use or availability of drugs.

Webb isn't the only one daring to speak the truth. New York Gov. David Paterson delivered the message to legislators in his state-of-the-state message: "I can't think of a criminal justice strategy that has been more unsuccessful than the Rockefeller Drug Laws."

And this week, Paterson delivered change, reaching a deal with legislative leaders to replace Nelson Rockefeller's drug war legacy with new laws that will give judges more discretion, let some addicts choose treatment over incarceration, and give current inmates a chance to have their sentences reduced.

We're seeing change at the top as well. Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week he is reversing the Bush administration's practice of prosecuting in federal courts medical marijuana distributors whose operations are legal under state law in California and other jurisdictions.

President Barack Obama has appointed a "drug czar" who told a Senate committee last week that prevention and treatment are as important as law enforcement. As Seattle police chief, Gil Kerlikowske implemented a policy set by voters in a referendum requiring police to make marijuana enforcement their lowest priority, earning praise from drug reform advocates.

Drug wars are still being fought, in Afghanistan, where most of the world's heroin originates, and in Mexico, where a government crackdown on drug cartels has sparked an orgy of violence.

But even these conflicts argue for reform rather than escalation. Visiting Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conceded that U.S. demand is in part responsible for Mexico's drug war - but she didn't call for longer prison sentences or other failed "war on drugs" prescriptions.

Instead, Americans are facing facts like these: An estimated 62 percent of the drug cartels' profits come from selling marijuana in the United States. Americans spent $9 billion a year on Mexican pot, the White House drug office estimates, and another $36 billion on domestic weed.

And, Webb notes, more than 47 percent of all U.S. drug arrests in 2007 were for marijuana offenses. That's a lot of money spent buying and policing a drug that, by most any measure, is less dangerous than beer.

With the economy on the skids and all levels of government struggling to keep their heads above water, there is a newly urgent focus on the money spent on police and prisons. Webb is introducing legislation, with bipartisan support, to create a national commission to re-examine the criminal justice system "from top to bottom."

There's even serious talk of legalization. A California lawmaker has introduced a bill that would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. A 10 percent tax on pot would generate $1.4 billion for California, Time's Joe Klein writes.

A similar bill has been filed in Massachusetts. It would legalize and tax commercial distribution of marijuana -- $150 an ounce for the lowest grade weed, rising to $250 for top quality. Richard Evans, one of the authors of the bill, estimates it could bring $100 million a year to the state treasury.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Massachusetts Legislature to show leadership on drug policy, but if the times they are a-changing, even Beacon Hill may eventually notice.

The House sponsor of the bill, Rep. Ellen Story, D-Amherst, doesn't expect it to pass soon, but told the Daily Collegian she's happy to help start the discussion.

"The older generation, for the most part, were the ones who had such trouble with same sex marriage, and the younger generation will come along and find it astonishing that that was ever a controversial issue," she said, "so the same thing may happen with marijuana."

Evans told me "decades of whispered grumblings about the wisdom and efficacy of prohibition are rapidly giving way to a really serious public discussion about how to replace it."

The discussion may feel new, he said, but America has been here before. In a time of similar economic strife 75 years ago, the nation left behind a culture wars issue that had dominated politics for a half-century. Prohibition had turned ordinary people into criminals, filled the prisons, turned the streets over to armed gangs -- and done nothing to make the nation more virtuous.

Under the leadership of a new president, Prohibition was repealed. History may not quite be ready to repeat itself, but people are talking about it, more seriously than ever.