Congress: A Modest Proposal

Congress: A Modest Proposal

 

Are you as tired as I am about the way Congress is acting?  They scream at each other.  Partisan warfare is unending and unrestricted.  Shouted slogans replace debate.  Nothing gets done; the wheels fall off and the government shuts down.  Congress needs to chill out.  Congressmen need to get mellow.  I have a modest proposal.

Before they attend any meeting to conduct legislative affairs, before any public appearance, before any media interview, all Congress members and candidates for Congress should be required to smoke a big, fat doobie.

Think about how much this would lower the temperature of the current hate fight between Red and Blue.  Tea Partiers and Ninety-niners would be bros, not foes.  In the words of Rodney King, we could all just get along.  (Some current members seem to be on the program already – have you seen Rand Paul’s recent ramblings?)

This program would have some drawbacks.  Speeches in the Senate would wander on to filibuster length; the membership of the house could never be gotten together at the same time and place to vote on anything (come to think about it, that’s how it works now).  The Capitol cafeteria would have to stock up on snack foods.  Perhaps Twinkies should be limited to Democrats and Ho Hos to Republicans to make scoring the food fights easier. (Or vice versa; maybe the Speaker and the Minority Leader could start each biennium by playing rock-scissors-paper for the choice.)  The tv Sunday talk shows would have to be extended to handle the rambling, disconnected answers they would be getting, but that would be no problem since nothing else competes for those time slots.

Speaking of television, to achieve the proposal’s goals the toke-up doctrine would have to extend to television interviewers and commentators.  They cause even more political rancor than do the politicians.  Here the results would almost all be positive.  Chris Mathews would no longer sound like he is on an extended speed tweak.  We might find out if Bill O’Reilly is capable of smiling – or at least grinning inanely.  Glen Beck might even start making sense.  Bob Shaeffer would be most appealing as a giggling grandpa.  Most of the media would probably go along willingly.  In fact, I suspect some of them are already on the program – have you listened to Rachael Maddow or Chris Hays lately?  A few would hold out.  Rush “Rob Ford” the Limburger has a taste that runs more to Oxy, and even a small case of the munchies would keep him from being able to squeeze through the studio doors.  

We need relief from the acrimonious, non-ending, partisan warfare that has resulted in permanent deadlock.  It’s time to give this modest proposal a chance.  It can’t do any greater damage than we now suffer, and it may give some easing of the stalemate in Washington.  At the very least, we would get some amusing minutes, and laughter IS the best medicine.  We have nothing to lose.  They might even vote to repeal the Controlled Substances Act.  If you agree, spark a jay and let your congresscritter know just how you feel on this important issue.  Maybe give him an eighth –you’ll have to hand deliver it to keep the postal inspectors and Fibbies at bay.  As for me, I don’t think I’ll ever vote for a candidate whose campaign song doesn’t include the line:

Everybody must get stoned!

Robbery in Blue

Robbery in Blue

 

[This is a companion piece to my earlier “Policing for Profit”.  It examines another – and darker – side of what happens when the goal of policing becomes dollars, not law enforcement.]

One night in 1992 a gang of masked and armed men burst into Donald Scott’s ranch house and shot him dead as he stood at the top of the stairs leading to his bedroom.  They were there to seize his ranch.  This armed gang was a mixed task force from federal and state police agencies, including the park service, which wanted the ranch for park land but were unable to buy it.  Their search warrant stated that a helicopter overflight had seen marijuana growing on the land, but as the subsequent law suit revealed, a search of the ranch after the fatal raid found no marijuana.

A young man in Florida was arrested and convicted for selling a small amount of marijuana in a shopping center parking lot.  The pick-up he was driving was forfeited to the government … as was his parent’s house.  He lived in an apartment on the rear of their house with its on separate entrance, although he did have access to his parents’ kitchen.  He used the phone in that apartment, which was listed in his name, had arranged to have installed, and paid for, to arrange the drug sale.  The DEA claimed that this use of the phone made the whole house an instrument of the crime even though the parents had no access to it.  The court held that the parents could not be innocent owners since their son had been on probation for marijuana possession when he was fifteen.  The judge said that the earlier probation put them on notice that he had a propensity to deal drugs and that they should have taken greater steps to insure he did not do so in their house.

A Florida nurseryman flew to Houston to buy plants for his business from growers in that area.  Since many of those small growers would not accept out of state checks, he withdrew $10,000 in cash to use on the trip[1].  Federal agents met his plane when it landed in Houston and he was arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking.  His money was confiscated.

In Dallas, a young man found a duffle bag full of money in the street.  He did the right thing and turned the money in to local authorities for return to the rightful owner.  The DEA asserted a claim to the money on the grounds that no one but a drug dealer would have that much cash.  This story has a happy ending.  The DEA’s claim was rejected and the money was awarded to the honest finder. (This is one of my favorite stories.)

These three stories are among the thousands of outcomes springing from one of the most overreaching follies of Nixon’s tough-on-crime War on Drugs: civil asset forfeiture.  The FBI and BNDD (later the DEA) had long been frustrated that they could rarely convict major crime figures who only gave orders, never dirtying their own hands.  The new laws[2] allowed then to seize any property that they had probable cause to believe had been used as a criminal instrumentality, was the proceeds of a crime, or had been acquired with criminal proceeds.  The government could seize the property based only on probable cause (a very low standard of proof) and the owner would be forced to file suit and prove by a preponderance of evidence that he was an innocent owner.

These laws not only severely weakened court oversight of the process, they also cut administrative and political control of police behavior out of the picture.  The seized assets did not go into general government funds subject to budgetary control and auditing; they went directly to the police agency that had done the seizing for discretionary use.  Some police have made selfish use of these slush funds.  A prosecutor bought a luxury automobile with expensive customizing for his “official” car.  A Texas sheriff threw monthly beer and barbeque outings for his deputies. (How did local police get into the act?  First, the federal agencies shared the loot with local agencies participating in the seizure, then most states enacted “baby RICOs” of their own.

Not all of the failures of these laws are as harmless as barbeque and pimped limos or merely excessive like the forfeiture of a yacht valued at over a million dollars because one marijuana cigarette butt was found in crew quarters.  Most are downright destructive.

Ironically, the law designed to punish the leaders of organized crime acted provided them a safety net.  Major drug lords discovered they could exchange forfeiture of secret or untouchable off-shore millions for short, easily served prison terms.  Manuel Noriega, corrupt drug-running Panamanian president bought a shorter sentence in a minimum security prison than a street-corner dealer would serve in a maximum security fortress.  Informants became a way of life for the police and flourishing businessmen in their own right; they not only received direct pay for information, they also got shares in forfeited property.  Many DEA informants have received over a million dollars each.[3]

Even the patterns of law enforcement changed.  On the Interstate highways running north and south through Florida and east and west through Arkansas, cars traveling north or east were rarely stopped.  They would be carrying drugs to be sold that would have to be destroyed.  South- and west-bound cars were more attractive targets:  they were carrying the proceeds of those sales, money that the cops could confiscate.  In one Texas county, patrolmen were issued pre-printed release forms.  A motorist stopped in that county with a large amount of cash could surrender the money, sign the release acknowledging he was allowing the cop to take the money, and drive away without being arrested.

These corrupting laws need to be repealed.  At the very least, they should be amended to require the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt its right to take to take the property and for the recovery of court costs and attorneys’ fees to the owner if the government does not prevail.  Any forfeited funds should go into the government’s general funds, subject to budgeting controls, not directly to the police.

In the meantime, if an armed bandit pulls you out of your car and has a tow-truck haul it away, or if you find yourself on the curb locked out of the house on which you have been paying the mortgage for fifteen years, just take a deep breath and smile.  You haven’t been robbed: the law says the cops have the right to grab it away from you.

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[1] Federal law requires banks to report all cash transactions of $10,000 or larger.

[2] Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) and Continuing Criminal Enterprises (CCE)

[3] See my earlier “Informants: Deal with the Devil” for more on this subject.

Marijuana or Cannabis?

Marijuana or Cannabis?

 

An ongoing squabble within the marijuana reform community is about what to call it.  Is it marijuana or is it cannabis?  While marijuana is the most common term, many – primarily medical marijuana proponents – prefer cannabis and advocate for its general use.  This debate is not crucial; the world has plenty of room for many names for a plant.  It does, however, create an intra-tribal rancor that could be eased by an understanding of the roots and motives of the combatants. In other words, look at the history of plants of the genus Cannabis in American culture, medicine, and law.

Up until the 1930s, America had treated this plant as if it were four separate entities, recognizing no connection among them.  Hemp was grown for fiber from the earliest colonial days.  Beginning in about 1840 tincture of cannabis was used medicinally.  After the Civil War, a small elite in East Coast cities started eating hashish in imitation of the French literary salons.  And after the Mexican Revolution, marijuana crossed the border and, spread by itinerant musicians and maritime seamen, migrated from the Southwest and New Orleans to Kansas City, Chicago, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles.  No one noticed a relationship among these four cultures (for more on this topic see my earlier “Prehistory of Marijuana”, Parts I and II, and “Marijuana Comes to the Americas).

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 brought marijuana together with what was left of the other three cultures for the first time.  In objecting to that Act, the AMA, recognizing the identity of marijuana and medical cannabis protested the Act would foreclose needed medical research.  Paint manufactures and bird seed sellers (who claimed that canaries would not sing without hemp seed) were allowed to import sterile hemp seeds.  Soon thereafter, in the build-up to World War II, hemp cultivation was allowed for duration of the war.  That law, for the first time, forced recognition of the unity of the four cultures.

At the time the Act was passed, three of the four cultures had faded into obscurity – almost extinction.  Hashish, always a small elitist cult, had shrunk to invisibility during the Progressive Era migrations and the rise of the speak-easy culture of alcohol Prohibition[1].  Hemp had always been labor-intensive both in cultivation and preparation.  When slavery ended, it became economically unproductive.  As sailing ships were replaced by steam, the primary market for ropes and sail cloth disappeared; and America’s conquest of the Philippine Islands made cheap sisal available as a replacement.  Currency was the only remaining market, and when the U. S. left the gold standard, hemp bills were replaced by rag-paper money.  Only the silent canaries and a few specialty paint manufacturers still consumed hemp.  

Cannabis entered Western medicine with O’Shaughnessy’s articles in the 1830s and remained for about one hundred years.  The first edition of Merck’s Manual listed over twenty applications, but its use was never widespread.  “Granny Books”, household medical handbooks for those living in rural areas without professional health care, and memoirs and biographies of frontier doctors make little mention of it.  By the end of the nineteenth century it had been replaced for pain relief – its major use – by oral and injected morphine and aspirin.  A 1913 study of pharmacists and drug stores by congressional investigators preparing for the Harrison Narcotics Act reported no need to move against Cannabis, having found fewer than ten preparations available and three of use for external use in corn plasters.  When the AMA testified in Congress against the Marihuana Tax Act, it warned about foreclosing research but made no mention of therapy.  Although expensive and very hard to obtain, cannabis remained available for therapy until the Boggs Amendments of 1951, but no one objected to its removal from the U. S. P. in 1942.  It had been removed from the doctor’s black bag long before that.

For roughly forty years, from 1937 until the mid-1970s, marijuana is the only one of the four cultures representing the plant in America.  And that representation was as an outlaw, dangerous drug.  And its use grew exponentially during that period.  In 1970, Nixon declared War on Drugs, and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (soon to become the DEA) shifted its focus from heroin to marijuana.

Among those now targeted was a small group of desperate patients suffering from terminal or life-threatening diseases (including cancers, AIDS, and glaucoma) who, finding no relief from mainstream medicine, turned to marijuana for help. These people were beset by two, and for some three, oppressive forces.  Conventional medicine could give them little relief.  For some, the nature of their disease brought social opprobrium; and the government treated them as felonious drug fiends.  But they persisted; the value of marijuana in treatment of many disorders was established; their numbers increased; professional associations recognized the value of their treatments; states – starting with California in 1996 and mounting to over twenty today – legally recognized their medicine; and public polls swung in their favor.

One of their tactics was to eschew the criminal aura associated with marijuana.  To do so, they resurrected the old name cannabis and built a creation myth around its hazy medical past. (Of course, if they wish to be accurate, they would limit cannabis to tinctures, call edibles hashish, and use marijuana for smokeable unprocessed plant buds.)

Just recently claims have been advanced that “marijuana” should not be used because of the xenophobic shades it acquired in the past.  But marijuana had established its presence in the U. S. before the hatred of Mexicans developed as a political issue.  Instead, its ethnic heritage should be honored, just as is done with enchiladas, curry, and Chianti.

The reform tent is broad enough for multiple names to be used.  However, if a single name is selected, it should be one that truly honors the history and heritage of the plant.  The roots of American marijuana lie, not in Europe, but in India, home of bhang and ganj.  From there it migrated to Jamaica with imported laborers and then to Panama and Mexico before coming to the U. S.  We should recognize that the Rastafarians truly know its history.  We should join them and call ganja by its proper name.

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[1] I have not run across a single reference to hashish in America between 1920 and 1960.

Whither Congress?

Whither Congress?

 

In a recent post (“Cease Fire?”) I argued that the Administration has radically changed its approach to drug law enforcement: that they appear to have accepted normalization of marijuana use and commerce.  But I also pointed out that real reform of federal drug laws rests in congress.  More recent developments now bring the question of what, if anything, congress is willing to do on this issue: whither Congress?

The most striking thing to come out of congress recently has been silence.  From the mid-1970s to the mid-90s, Congress never saw a drug law it didn’t like.  In fact, the members played “Can you top this?”, each trying to prove he was the most ardent Drug Warrior of them all.  The results included RICO and CCE, the powder/crack cocaine sentencing disparity, mandatory minimum sentences, and the Club Drug Act, to name just their most visible actions.  They also created the Drug Czar (Office of National Drug Control Policy).  But then they seemed to fall asleep for a decade.  The War on Drugs looked like it was running on autopilot.

The long nap ended with some quiet moves toward reform.  Judges regained their discretion to impose sentences less than those mandated by the Mandatory Minimum law.  The crack cocaine-powder cocaine sentencing disparity was reduced from 1 to 100 down to 1 to 18 (still totally unjustified and discriminatory).  An erosive trickle had appeared in Fortress Prohibition, but then congress went back to sleep.

However 2012-13, the annus maribilis of the Drug War, has been dramatic enough that those trickles now look like signals of a looming tsunami.  First, Colorado and Washington enacted state legalization of marijuana (including growth, distribution, and sale) by referendum.  Then after nine months – is that time span significant? – the Obama administration took three executive steps almost simultaneously.  First it announced that U. S. Attorneys would be instructed to draft charging instruments (complaints and indictments) to avoid invoking mandatory minimum sentences.  The next announcement was that it would not prosecute those operating in compliance with state marijuana laws if those laws complied with eight standards articulated in that memo.  This was immediately followed by a statement that the Attorney General would work with the bank regulators to make normal banking services available to marijuana businesses in those states.

Reaction among the federal law establishment was immediate.  A district judge in Maryland announced a very light sentence in a marijuana trafficking case, saying that the logic of the Justice Department’s statements was thoroughly convincing.  Two of the most aggressively Prohibitionist U. S. Attorneys in California dismissed at least three high profile, big-dollar asset forfeiture cases.

But where were those senators and representatives who, barely a decade before, had been so anxious to prove that they were the most ardent of all Warriors against Drugs?  Their silence on the issue was deafening.  The District of Columbia, where Congress has direct governmental authority is on the verge of legalizing marijuana, but Congress has made no move to block it – a contrast from its blocking medical marijuana there for over a decade.  Congress is quiescent. Not.  One.  Peep.

The other side, long cowed into silence, began to stir.  Almost as soon as the Colorado and Washington election returns were counted, eight representatives sponsored a bill that would have required the federal government to respect state marijuana laws.  The week after the Justice announcement of non-prosecution in states with effective marijuana laws, the Senate Judiciary Committee had a hearing on the issue of enforcing the federal law.  Assistant A-G Cole and two Washington state law enforcement officials testified in support of the new position.  The only witness opposing the action was a professional Prohibitionist and rehab huckster.  The committee members themselves voiced no opposition.  Since then Republican Sen. MCain has stated that Prohibition has been a failure and the law needs to be re-examined.  New Democratic Senator Booker from New Jersey and Republican Senator Paul from Kentucky announced, virtually simultaneously, that drug sentences were too severe and needed to be revised; and then each of them independently said they would work together on the issue.

The Administration has begun a retreat; one from which a resumption of hostilities will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.  But the drug laws are so tightly written and draconian that real reform without Congressional action is impossible.  The question “Whither Congress?” shouts for an answer.

The next election cycle in 2014 will probably provide that answer.  As many as four or five states will probably follow Colorado and Washington.  The Administration will be too far down the non-enforcement road to backtrack.  The question is whether the pressure on a Congress with already weakened support for the Drug War will be enough to overcome the factionalism and paralysis now preventing action on anything.  The failure of the Drug War looks to be so obvious and so accepted that reform will probably force its way even through this do-nothing Congress during the next two years.

The Drug War Racket

The Drug War Racket

 

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

Eric Hoffer

The Temper of Our Time

 

The history of Prohibition clearly follows the arc of Hoffer's aphorism.  Prohibition started as a religious and moral movement early in the nineteenth century, it developed into a business in the mid-twentieth century with laws prohibiting drugs other than alcohol.  Finally, the failed War on Drugs has degenerated into a racket. 

Prohibition started as a religious movement early in the nineteenth century when the secular republic of the Revolution turned to religion in the Second Great Awakening.  As it developed, it merged three different religious traditions.  The older Puritans, who had faded a century earlier, bequeathed the idea that society had a moral obligation to closely constrain public conformity.  The Evangelists who arose after about 1810 focused on sanctification, or that each person must lead a godly life to achieve salvation.  By the end of that century they were joined by the practitioners of the social gospel who believed in a mission to better social conditions and society itself.  The common thread holding all three together was an insistence on absolute sobriety.  They were able to impose their religious vision (whichever form it took) on the nation as a whole with the ratification of the Prohibition in 1919.  When Prohibition was repealed, the Dry true believers simply switched their allegiance to the new drug prohibition that developed in the 1920s.  Some even continued giving the same speeches, merely substituting the word “drugs” for “alcohol”.  Even today this absolute moralistic core resonates with many Drug Warriors who still see all drugs (or at least selected “bad” drugs) as evil and who insist on total, nationwide sobriety.

When Prohibition – of both alcohol and other drugs – came into effect in the 1920s, the moral crusade for total sobriety morphed into a business of enforcement.  The commercialization actually started in the late nineteenth century with the opening of inebriation asylums and sobriety clinics.  In the twentieth, they were joined by healers working against drug addiction – in fact the term ”addict” itself grew from those efforts.  They grew from city clinics to institutes trying to break the grip of drugs on their users.  In the mid-30s even the prison system joined in this professional effort with the opening of the federal “narcotic farms” in Lexington and Fort Worth.  These, in turn, became the foundation of the medical profession’s work in the field of drug abuse.  The professionalization of rehabilitation and drug medicine was joined by that of drug policing.  By 1930 both the Prohibition Bureau (later merged into the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency) and the Bureau of Narcotics (forerunner of the current Drug Enforcement Agency) had become regular civil service bureaus.

The new business of Prohibition slogged along unsuccessfully for a half a century (that’s right: more than fifty years elapsed between the Harrison Narcotic Act and the Controlled Substances Act) before it was supercharged by the War on Drugs and greedily expanded into a racket.  Over a trillion dollars has been thrown to greedy sharks, and drug use is more wide-spread than ever.

From 1970 to 2010 prison population expanded from under 500,000 to over 2,000,000 – most of it from drug arrests.  Private for-profit corporations rushed in to build prisons and operate them under state contracts – and they insured those profits gained with massive campaign contributions and lobbying.  The California Corrections Officers association quickly became one of the richest and most powerful political associations in the state.  Dependence therapy and rehabilitation, a small medical specialty since the 1920s, blossomed into a nationwide industry with major chains of treatment organizations, often run by hucksters and quacks. 

The federal government also poured two massive torrents of money into Prohibition that turned policing into a for-profit racket.   The first was a series of grants, both money and military surplus equipment (which is why even small town police have tanks).  These were primarily based on numbers of arrests, and marijuana arrests are easy to make[1].  The second War on Drugs innovation was civil forfeiture of any assets used in the commission of a crime or acquired through criminal proceeds[2].  Those funds go directly to the police agencies (federal and local) outside of their normal budgetary procedures and constraints.  One Texas sheriff uses part of his forfeited assets to throw regular beer and barbeque gatherings for his deputies.  This process has also allowed major drug kingpins to bribe their way into much shorter prison sentences.

Hoffer’s map traces the trajectory of Prohibition from crusade to business to racket, but it is incomplete.  Every arc comes to an end, but Hoffer gives no clue to what that end may be.  Like a fly ball, it could fall outside the fence for a score or into a fielder’s glove for an out.  Like a cannonball, it could bury itself in the dirt or blow up a fort.  Like a meteor, it could burn out as a fiery streak across the sky or crash into the Gulf of Mexico destroying the dinosaurs and most other life.  The arc of Prohibition must end.  It is up to us to make sure its end comes quickly and does as little harm as possible.

 

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[1] See my earlier “Policing for Profit”.

[2] Soon to come on this blog: “Robbery in Blue”.

Cease Fire?

Cease Fire?

 

Has the Obama administration declared a cease fire in the War on Drugs?  The evidence surely points in that direction.

In 2008, Candidate Obama made several remarks suggesting that he intended to liberalize marijuana laws.  Many of his supporters became critical when most of his first administration passed without action on these statements.  But toward the end of that term the Justice Department issued the Ogden memorandum, stating that it would not prosecute medical marijuana users or their caregivers complying with state medical marijuana laws.

After the 2012 elections, Obama was faced with additional challenges in drug law enforcement.  Washington and Colorado both passed initiatives legalizing marijuana sales and possession, new states recognized medical use of marijuana (raising the total to twenty-one jurisdictions doing so), and congressional sequestration dramatically reduced the funds available for law enforcement.  Eight months passed before the administration responded to those events, but when they came, they were sweeping[1].

The first break was an announcement by Attorney General Holder that he was instructing federal prosecutors to draft charging instruments (complaints and indictments) to avoid imposing mandatory minimum sentences in non-violent drug cases.  He supported this instruction by showing the immense burden these lengthy sentences placed on the prison system.

Toward the end of August, a memorandum from Asst. A-G Cole announced that the federal government would abstain from proceeding against state marijuana laws and their implementation if those laws complied with eight standards articulated in that memorandum.  To a large extent, those standards provide guidelines for other states wanting to enact similar laws.  Senator Patrick Leahy convened a hearing by the Judiciary Committee to inquire about this memo.  The hearing lasted one day, Cole was the only federal spokesman to appear, and only one witness – a professional anti-drug advocate with financial interests in the rehabilitation industry – was opposed to the action taken by the government.

On the same day the Cole memo was released, A-G Holder announced he would be conferring with federal bank regulators to find some way for businesses in compliance with these new state laws to use normal commercial banking services.  Up until now the government has used the threats against banks under the Money Laundering and RICO/CCE laws to prevent them from doing business with marijuana enterprises legal under state laws.  Forcing these enterprises to operate on a cash basis not only made them hard to manage, it also made them into targets for robbery.  About six weeks after Holder’s announcement, Bank of America has agreed to be a depository for all marijuana taxes and license fees collected by Washington State.  Since large banks operate very cautiously, this action by BoA suggests some accommodation by the federal bank regulators in line with the Holder announcement.

The other collateral attack used by aggressive federal prosecutors against state-legal marijuana has been to use asset forfeiture laws (CCE) against landlords leasing property to marijuana businesses.  If an asset – including real property – is used in the commission of a federal crime, that asset may be seized and forfeited to the government.  In a sense asset forfeiture is the government’s biggest stick against marijuana businesses: if landlords are scared away from leasing to them, legitimate businesses are reduced to being street dealers.  From this viewpoint, the announcement a few days ago by one of the most aggressive U. S. Attorneys in California dismissing four large asset forfeiture cases was a bombshell.  It took a major weapon out of play and put it back on the shelf.

One executive voice has been strangely missing from this flurry of federal actions.  The Office of National Drug Control Policy, the agency designated by Congress to set and articulate the government’s drug strategy has said almost nothing about these developments.  In fact, except for its required annual report, it has said nothing of substance.

In summary, over the last two months, the administration has:

·         Decided not to use mandatory minimum sentences,

·         Acquiesced in state marijuana legalization laws,

·         Announced a review of banking regulations to allow state-legal businesses to have access to banking services (and Bank of America has entered the business),

·         Dismissed a series of large, high-profile asset forfeiture cases.

Combining these four major reductions in drug law enforcement with the eight month delay between the 2012 election results and their announcements leads to the conclusion that the administration has declared a cease fire in the War on Drugs – at least in the War on marijuana.  If this cease fire continues for another thirteen months, the next round of elections should usher in a new group of legalizing states, possibly four or five more.  If this does result, the cease fire will become a fait accompli: an irrevocable accession to state-by-state legalization.

Why do I characterize this as a cease fire instead of a truce or even a surrender?  The problem is that the administration can only decide how to pursue the War on Drugs; it cannot decide on its own to end the war.  Only congress can end the war, and it has shown no inclination to do so.  When will congress admit that they have lost the war and repeal Drug Prohibition?

One hopeful sign has been the silence from Capitol Hill.  No elected Drug Warriors have been screaming for punishing the legalizing states; no committee hearings have pushed stricter enforcement.  The silence is deafening.  One more election may shift the congressional balance of power and change this cease fire into a peace treaty.

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[1] For a running account of these developments, see my earlier “Whatcha Goona Do?”, “Six Months”, “They Blinked”, “Ogden and Cole”, and “Parsing the Cole Memo”.

The Range of Legalization

The Range of Legalization

I originally wrote this for a group working to modernize the marijuana laws in Texas.  But as I was writing it, I realized that most of it is general enough to apply anywhere.  The main thrust is that a reformed law will have a broad and beneficial effect on many aspects of society.  So, ignore the Texas-specific parts and use those parts that apply to your state.

 

Selling Marijuana to Texas

After reading Grieder’s “Hot, Wide, Cheap, and Right” that I recommended last week, I started thinking about how we try to sell marijuana reform to both the Lege and fellow Texans.  And I have concluded that we need to change the main thrust of our argument.

Most of the time, we have stressed the negative: “Quit putting people in jail for marijuana”; “don’t come between a patient and a doctor.”  We can’t E-lim-i-nate the negative altogether, but we can soft=tone it while we AC-cent-u-ate the Positive:  We can talk about the good marijuana can do for Texas.  We can switch to the positive by talking about six things: commerce, agriculture, energy, medicine, technology, and higher education.

COMMERCE:  The growth in commerce will be astonishing.  Even the smallest town will have at least one retailer, who rents or owns a store and may have employees.  Packagers and distributors will supply them; and they in turn will need truckers, label printers, and container makers.  Those providing marijuana edibles need commercial kitchens, cooks, and display areas.  Hemp clothing, food and cosmetics will continue to be sold, but they will probably be made from locally grown hemp.  A glance at the display next to the cash register in any convenience store will show how the market for accessories will thrive

AGRICULTURE: Texas has always been known for its vigorous agricultural sector.  Marijuana can expand agriculture in three ways.  Marijuana can be a field crop, much like the vegetables grown in many parts of the state, or it can be a specialty product grown in greenhouses.  Hemp, with its stalks, is a fiber crop to challenge cotton or wool, or it can be grown for its seeds and oil.  For many hemp products, the change will be that they are made from locally grown hemp instead of imported.  Most of these farmers will hire laborers.  The farm supply industry will sell them seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides; greenhouse growers will also need high-end environmental control and hydroponic systems.  Farm machinery manufacturers will quickly provide equipment for hemp cultivation and harvest, and marijuana harvesting gear will soon follow.

ENERGY:  The energy business has been the keystone of Texas industry for a century.  Recently it has moved past sole reliance on oil to add natural gas and, more recently, renewables like ethanol and wind power.  Hemp can provide renewable fuel.  Prototypes have been demonstrated both for biodiesel from hempseed oil and for cellulosic ethanol from hemp stems and leads.  Both of these need significant development before emerging as competitors for petroleum fuels, but the established energy companies have the knowledge, technology, and resources to do that development and have the marketing outlets and incentives to do so.  The close geographical and transportation ties between these industries and the envisioned Texas hemp cultivation should prove synergistic.

MEDICINE:  Although therapeutic use of marijuana has become well established over the last forty years, federal prohibition has virtually squelched basic research.  Many fundamental questions of both physiology and pharmacology remain unanswered.  Texas contains some of the world’s leading medical research institutions.  The Houston Medical Center, including M. D. Anderson, is a good example of the resources available to pursue this research and to advance treatment if Prohibition is ended.

TECHNOLOGY:  Most of the developments discussed above call for technological improvements on the way to market.  Agriculture needs tools for tillage, harvest, and product processing.  Energy needs process and chemical engineering to move from prototype to commercial production and distribution.  Medical research has barely begun.  These technologies – agriculture, fuel and chemical processing, medical technology, and transportation – are those in which Texas already excels.  Legalizing marijuana would play into Texas strengths and allow it to build a dominant position in a new industry.

HIGHER EDUCATION:  In the same way, Texas higher education is well placed to advance this new industry.  Texas A&M and Texas Tech are at the fore in agricultural science and technology.  Many Texas universities have outstanding programs in energy and process engineering and in medical science and engineering.  They, too, could build on their already proven abilities.

This brief outline shows ways in which legalizing marijuana could broadly benefit all Texans: that it is not just coddling stoners or excusing junk medicine.  However, my perspective, while broad, lacks depth.  I invite those with more knowledge than me (not a very high standard) in agriculture, economics, engineering, and business to expand these sketchy overviews and provide some substance.

If each of my little paragraphs could be expanded to a few pages of solid detail, he result would be a pamphlet capable of convincing large numbers of people.  A press run of a thousand would supply every elected official, state and federal, every university president, and the major state news outlets.  Placement on the Web would make it available to millions.

 

Is this a project we can do?  Who will join me on this?