cannabisnews.com: Casualties of the Marijuana War





Casualties of the Marijuana War
Posted by FoM on March 27, 2000 at 11:35:20 PT
By Lowell Weiss
Source: Salon Magazine
It isn't just cancer and AIDS patients who are suffering because of America's anti-pot hysteria. Hundreds of small-time users are in jail -- for life. Notes of sanity have begun appearing in the great marijuana debate. In the last election, Arizona and California voters passed, by wide margins, referendums allowing for the medical use of marijuana if recommended by a medical doctor. 
The Clinton administration, which had set its face firmly against any form of legalization, even for medical purposes, convened an expert panel under the auspices of the National Institute of Health to study the matter further. The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has editorialized for a change of policy. If these moves signal a cooling of the war on marijuana, they could not have come at a more crucial time. As Eric Schlosser argues in a lengthy article in the April Atlantic, the war has caused enormous collateral damage -- not only to those in pain, but throughout the nation's courts and prisons. Violent criminals, Schlosser writes, are being released early from the nation's prisons to make room for the swelling masses of marijuana and other petty drug offenders locked up with mandatory-minimum sentences that carry no possibility of parole. Nonviolent marijuana offenders, especially those sentenced in federal courts, often spend far more time behind bars than murderers. Some are serving life sentences. Schlosser won a National Magazine Award for his two-part series on marijuana that ran in the Atlantic in 1994. Salon talked with Schlosser about his recent findings, which he says suggests America is "caught in the grip of a deep psychosis." In some states, you write, the rate of incarceration for drug offenders has increased so rapidly that new prisons would have to be opened every 90 days to keep up -- at a cost of more than $100,000 per cell. With government budget-cutting so in vogue, how did these huge costs escape politicians' notice? It's simple: Policy is not being driven by reason, it's driven by political expediency. It's very similar to anti-Communism crusades of the 1950s. The only politicians who feel secure enough to question our policies are those who are out of office. And, you say, liberals seem to be just as cowed by the hysteria as conservatives. Yes. As I point out in my piece, last year even liberals like (Sen.) Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) lined up behind (Sen.) Phil Gramm's (R-Texas) proposal to revoke federal welfare and food stamps from anyone convicted of a drug crime, even a misdemeanor. Politicians of both parties insist on dealing with this issue almost exclusively through the criminal justice system -- not through the public health system. If you're an alcoholic, there are hundreds of rehab programs available; if you're a drug abuser, the government would just as soon lock you up and throw away the key. How many marijuana offenders are serving life sentences? The figures don't exist. None of the usual federal data sources keep track of nonviolent marijuana cases as separate from other nonviolent drug cases. But we know it's in the hundreds. But they would be for the big dealers, not your average user. Not necessarily. For example, Jim Montgomery, a paraplegic immobilized from the waist down who used marijuana to relieve pain, was busted in Sayre, Okla., with two ounces of marijuana in a pouch in the back of his wheelchair. It was a first offense. He got life plus 16 years. So, don't ever get busted in Oklahoma. Are there wide variations from state to state? Oklahoma is by far the worst in terms of length of sentence. New Mexico is the most lenient. For less than 100 pounds, the maximum penalty is 18 months. For more than 100 pounds, the maximum penalty is three years. When do the feds get involved? Federal prosecutors have the right to press federal charges for any amount of marijuana. But guidelines vary from region to region. In some districts, a federal prosecutor will not press charges unless there are more than 100 plants involved, for example. How has the Clinton administration performed in the marijuana wars? Under Clinton, the number of marijuana arrests has gone up by more than 40 percent. In 1995, the most recent year we have data on, authorities arrested 600,000 people for marijuana offenses -- more than ever before. Next year's budget for the war on drugs is the largest in American history. Yet he's being attacked because drug use has gone up during his presidency. Should he be feeling defensive? Yes, he does have reason to feel defensive. His law-and-order approach to marijuana is destroying thousands of lives without demonstrably reducing marijuana use. It is a failed policy. Arrests have reached an all-time peak at the same time that use has tripled. People accuse junkies of behaving self-destructively, but in the case of marijuana, the government is even more wedded to such behavior. You write that a lot of the trouble is being caused by the mandatory minimum sentence laws. How did they come about with respect to drugs? In some states, these statutes have been on the books for more than 20 years. But the real turning point was 1986. And one high-profile case was all it took. Two days after signing a lucrative rookie deal with the Boston Celtics, star basketball player Len Bias suddenly died, allegedly after smoking crack. The story became the nation's topic No. 1. Mid-term elections were around the corner, and (former House Speaker) Tip O'Neill knew he had to do something, so he assembled his troops and in about six weeks wrote and passed the most sweeping drug-control legislation in a generation. There was no careful deliberation. There were no public hearings on the mandatory minimum provisions. The result was devastating to the criminal justice system. How does the law work? At the state and federal level, a mandatory minimum sentence is triggered by the amount of drugs involved in a case -- not by a person's role in the crime. Whether you're the guy driving the truck for $1,000 or you own a fleet of trucks and are making tens of millions, you are subject to the same strict penalties. How much discretion do prosecutors have? A lot. In many respects they now have more power to determine sentencing than judges. It's up to the prosecutor to decide how much of the drug to include in the indictment, and whether to file under a mandatory minimum statute at all. They often use these statutes to plea bargain; the ability to pile one mandatory minimum charge on top of another gives enormous leverage to the prosecutor. In my article I give a great example of just how much discretion prosecutors have. Indiana Congressman Dan Burton, the Republican heading up the House's investigation of campaign-finance improprieties, and a supporter of life sentences for some marijuana crimes, has a son who has gotten himself into a mess of trouble. Danny Burton II was busted for driving about eight pounds of pot from Louisiana to Indiana. Six months later, police raided his apartment and found 30 marijuana plants and a shotgun. The feds did not press charges. Indiana prosecutors got his charges dismissed. In Louisiana, he got off with community service, probation and house arrest. Under federal drug laws, just for the gun alone Burton could have faced a mandatory sentence of five years in prison. Suffice it to say that most offenders don't have this kind of luck with prosecutors. Where do you stand on the debate about the health effects of marijuana? The Lancet, one of the most influential medical journals in the world, recently concluded -- and these are the exact words -- "the smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health." I'm not quite that categorical. It's clear that inhaling smoke is bad for your lungs. I also believe that people who smoke marijuana on a daily basis put themselves at risk of reversible short-term memory problems. It's also clear that young people shouldn't smoke pot. It's bad for athletic and academic performance, and it can exacerbate emotional problems, too. So can other substances, which are legal. Why is marijuana still such a target? I think it has everything to do with who those users are. This society does not scorn all drugs. Alcohol is very respectable. We even allow beer ads on MTV, a network aimed at people 12-24 years old. But pot is different. In America, pot has been associated with the wrong elements: Mexicans, blacks and nonconformists of all stripes. The war on marijuana has little to do with health. It has everything to do with culture. It's a moral crusade. And moral crusades often have perverse results. In this case, we're giving life sentences without parole to first offenders for small amounts of a relatively harmless substance. Besides the successful medicinal-marijuana ballot measures, are there other encouraging signs on the horizon? At the state level, legislators are getting fed up with mandatory minimums. As prisons get more and more overstuffed, they're starting to look at alternative sentencing -- like boot camps -- along with expanded drug treatment. Last year in Ohio they decriminalized the growing of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. The provision was tucked into a larger bill, but nonetheless the bill received the support of the state's conservative governor, George Voinovich. At the national level, there's just extraordinary cowardice. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll have any constructive changes in federal marijuana policy in the foreseeable future. March 27, 1997 Lowell Weiss is a writer who lives in Boston. He was formerly a speech writer for Vice President Al Gore and a staff editor at the Atlantic. Is America's war against marijuana a destructive witch-hunt or a necessary thing? Join the Discussion in Table Talk. http://tabletalk.salon1999.com/webxPublished: March 27, 2000Copyright © 2000 Salon.com CannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archives:http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml
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Comment #3 posted by Freedom on March 27, 2000 at 18:25:58 PT
Thanks FoM.
No need, the way things are going with the support I got from the NYT folks, the CNS WoDs board is my board. You have plenty to do, and I would not want to have any more posting obligations. I spend 75% of my time writing LTEs.
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on March 27, 2000 at 15:23:56 PT
Thanks Freedom
Thanks Freedom! I appreciate the compliment.Peace, FoM!PS: Freedom if you would want a message board with your name on it to develop the way you want please just ask me and I will add one. It doesn't take but a few minutes unless you want a special header for it. I can do that at anytime though. Maybe you could ask Cryote to make you a banner and I could put it on the page. Let me know if you want one.PSS: That goes for anyone that posts here regularly too. Just ask me. I'm having fun putting Hubble Space pics and horse pics on my one thread.
My Drug Policy Talk Message Board
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Comment #1 posted by Freedom on March 27, 2000 at 12:04:48 PT
FoM...
What an excellent group of articles you have posted today.Most satisfying! 
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