3 Awesome articles in the NY Times this week on MJ laws need to be changed
New York Times calls for marijuana legalization
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Protestors stand on the steps of New York City Hall in support of the proposed Fairness and Equity Act, which would attempt to reform racially biased arrests in regards to marijuana possession in New York state on July 9, 2014 in New York City
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Washington (AFP) - The New York Times called for the legalization of marijuana, in a bold editorial comparing the federal ban on cannabis to Prohibition.
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The prestigious publication said pot laws disproportionately impact young black men and that addiction and dependence are "relatively minor problems" -- especially when compared with alcohol and tobacco.
"It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished," the newspaper said.
"It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol. The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana."
Noting that the editorial board reached its conclusion after much discussion, The Times described the social costs of marijuana laws as "vast."
Citing FBI figures showing there were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012 -- far higher than for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives -- it said "the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals."
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House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations Chairman John Mica holds …
While advocating for a ban on marijuana sales to those under 21, the paper also said the "moderate use of marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults."
The call comes just weeks after recreational pot sales began in the western US state of Washington, which followed Colorado's decision to let people buy marijuana with no medical prescription.
And earlier this month, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill making New York the 23rd state to legalize marijuana for medical use.
In another recent move reflecting growing public support for easing marijuana laws, the House of Representatives voted in May to bar federal authorities from raiding medical marijuana facilities or growers in states that have legalized its use.
- Call sparks reader reaction -
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Marijuana bongs, or water pipes, are displayed at the Cannabis City retail marijuana store on July 8 …
The Times editorial, titled "Repeal Prohibition, Again," kicks off a series of pieces on the issue by members of the editorial board and invites readers to weigh in.
The first have already done so, with their views posted on the newspaper's website.
E.S. Lawrence, a self-described 20-year veteran high school teacher, expressed concern about children getting access to the substance, describing it as a "gateway drug" with detrimental effects on memory and learning.
"It's NOT a benign drug. As long as there's a danger of pot being acquired by children, I'm against legality," Lawrence posted.
But Emmett Hoops argued that legalization would allow for both taxation and regulation, adding that "mere decriminalization keeps profits in the hands of criminal gangs."
"It is beyond ridiculous to keep marijuana illegal while tobacco and alcohol kill scores every day in our state," Hoops, from New York, posted.
In January, President Barack Obama made headlines when he said smoking pot was no more dangerous than drinking, though he called the practice a "bad idea."
In comments to The New Yorker magazine, the US leader also noted that poor minority youths were more likely to get prison time for using marijuana than their richer counterparts.
However, he stopped short of calling for legalizing the drug at the federal level.
Repeal Prohibition, Again
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.
The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.
We reached that conclusion after a great deal of discussion among the members of The Times’s Editorial Board, inspired by a rapidly growing movement among the states to reform marijuana laws.
There are no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization. That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level.
We considered whether it would be best for Washington to hold back while the states continued experimenting with legalizing medicinal uses of marijuana, reducing penalties, or even simply legalizing all use. Nearly three-quarters of the states have done one of these.
But that would leave their citizens vulnerable to the whims of whoever happens to be in the White House and chooses to enforce or not enforce the federal law.
The social costs of the marijuana laws are vast. There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, according to F.B.I. figures, compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives. Even worse, the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals.
There is honest debate among scientists about the health effects of marijuana, but we believe that the evidence is overwhelming that addiction and dependence are relatively minor problems, especially compared with alcohol and tobacco. Moderate use of marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults. Claims that marijuana is a gateway to more dangerous drugs are as fanciful as the “Reefer Madness” images of murder, rape and suicide.
There are legitimate concerns about marijuana on the development of adolescent brains. For that reason, we advocate the prohibition of sales to people under 21.
Creating systems for regulating manufacture, sale and marketing will be complex. But those problems are solvable, and would have long been dealt with had we as a nation not clung to the decision to make marijuana production and use a federal crime.
In coming days, we will publish articles by members of the Editorial Board and supplementary material that will examine these questions. We invite readers to offer their ideas, and we will report back on their responses, pro and con.
We recognize that this Congress is as unlikely to take action on marijuana as it has been on other big issues. But it is long past time to repeal this version of Prohibition.
Let States Decide on Marijuana
By DAVID FIRESTONEJULY 26, 2014
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In 1970, at the height of his white-hot war on crime, President Richard Nixon demanded that Congress pass the Controlled Substances Act to crack down on drug abuse. During the debate, Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut held up a package wrapped in light-green paper that he said contained $3,000 worth of marijuana. This substance, he said, caused such “dreadful hallucinations” in an Army sergeant in Vietnam that he called down a mortar strike on his own troops. A few minutes later, the Senate unanimously passed the bill.
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Related in Opinion
High Time: Repeal Prohibition, Again
Editorial: The Public Lightens Up About WeedJULY 26, 2014
That law, so antique that it uses the spelling “marihuana,” is still on the books, and is the principal reason that possessing the substance in Senator Dodd’s package is considered illegal by the United States government. Changing it wouldn’t even require an act of Congress — the attorney general or the secretary of Health and Human Services could each do so — although the law should be changed to make sure that future administrations could not reimpose the ban.
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The Legal Patchwork
37 states plus the District of Columbia have liberalized marijuana laws:
Medical marijuana or limited access to low-THC formulas
Decriminalization (generally, fines for minor offenses)
D.C.
Decriminalization and medical
Legalization (recreational as well as medical use)
People living under relaxed marijuana laws (about 76% of the population):
35%
4
33
4
24% of U.S.
Both
Full prohibition
Medical
Decriminalization
Legalization
The New York Times
Sources: National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws; National Conference of State Legislatures; news reports
Some laws have yet to take effect.
Repealing it would allow the states to decide whether to permit marijuana use and under what conditions. Nearly three-fourths of them have already begun to do so, liberalizing their laws in defiance of the federal ban. Two have legalized recreational use outright, and if the federal government also recognized the growing public sentiment to legalize and regulate marijuana, that would almost certainly prompt more states to follow along.
The increasing absurdity of the federal government’s position is evident in the text of the Nixon-era law. “Marihuana” is listed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act alongside some of the most dangerous and mind-altering drugs on earth, ranked as high as heroin, LSD and bufotenine, a highly toxic and hallucinogenic toad venom that can cause cardiac arrest. By contrast, cocaine and methamphetamine are a notch down on the government’s rankings, listed in Schedule II.
That illogical distinction shows why many states have begun to disregard the federal government’s archaic rules. Schedule II drugs, while carrying a high potential for abuse, have a legitimate medical use. (Even meth is sold in prescription form for weight loss.) But according to the language of the law, marijuana and the other Schedule I drugs have “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”
STATES TAKE THE LEAD No medical use? That would come as news to the millions of people who have found that marijuana helped them through the pain of AIDS, or the nausea and vomiting of chemotherapy, or the seizures of epilepsy. As of this month, 35 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of marijuana consumption for medical purposes. New York is one of the latest states to defy the tired edict of the Controlled Substances Act.
It’s hard for the public to take seriously a law that says marijuana and heroin have exactly the same “high potential for abuse,” since that ignores the vastly more addictive power of narcotics, which have destroyed the lives of millions of people around the world. (There are no documented deaths from a marijuana overdose.) The 44-year refusal of Congress and eight administrations to alter marijuana’s place on Schedule I has made the law a laughingstock, one that states are openly flouting.
In addition to the medical exceptions, 18 states and the District of Columbia have decriminalized marijuana, generally meaning that possession of small amounts is treated like a traffic ticket or ignored. Two states, Colorado and Washington, have gone even further and legalized it for recreational purposes; two others, Alaska and Oregon, will decide whether to do the same later this year.
The states are taking the lead because they’re weary of locking up thousands of their own citizens for possessing a substance that has less potential for abuse and destructive behavior than alcohol. A decision about what kinds of substances to permit, and under what conditions, belongs in the purview of the states, as alcohol is handled.
Consuming marijuana is not a fundamental right that should be imposed on the states by the federal government, in the manner of abortion rights, health insurance, or the freedom to marry a partner of either sex. It’s a choice that states should be allowed to make based on their culture and their values, and it’s not surprising that the early adopters would be socially liberal states like Colorado and Washington, while others hang back to gauge the results.
PRE-EMPTED BY WASHINGTON Many states are unwilling to legalize marijuana as long as possessing or growing it remains a federal crime. Colorado, for instance, allows its largest stores to cultivate up to 10,200 cannabis plants at a time. But the federal penalty for growing more than 1,000 plants is a minimum of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10 million. That has created a state of confusion in which law-abiding growers in Colorado can face federal penalties.
Last August, the Justice Department issued a memo saying it would not interfere with the legalization plans of Colorado and Washington as long as they met several conditions: keeping marijuana out of the hands of minors or criminal gangs; prohibiting its transport out of the state; and enforcing prohibitions against drugged driving, violence and other illegal drugs. The government has also said banks can do business with marijuana sellers, easing a huge problem for a growing industry. But the Justice Department guidance is loose; aggressive federal prosecutors can ignore it “if state enforcement efforts are not sufficiently robust,” the memo says.
That’s a shaky foundation on which to build confidence in a state’s legalization plan. More important, it applies only to this moment in this presidential administration. President Obama’s Justice Department could change its policy at any time, and so of course could the next administration.
HOW TO END THE FEDERAL BAN Allowing states to make their own decisions on marijuana — just as they did with alcohol after the end of Prohibition in 1933 — requires unambiguous federal action. The most comprehensive plan to do so is a bill introduced last year by Representative Jared Polis, Democrat of Colorado, known as the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act. It would eliminate marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, require a federal permit for growing and distributing it, and have it regulated (just as alcohol is now) by the Food and Drug Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. An alternative bill, which would not be as effective, was introduced by Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, as the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act. It would not remove marijuana from Schedule I but would eliminate enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act against anyone acting in compliance with a state marijuana law.
Congress is clearly not ready to pass either bill, but there are signs that sentiments are changing. A promising alliance is growing on the subject between liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans. In a surprise move in May, the House voted 219 to 189 to prohibit the Drug Enforcement Administration from prosecuting people who use medical marijuana, if a state has made it legal. It was the first time the House had voted to liberalize a marijuana law; similar measures had repeatedly failed in previous years. The measure’s fate is uncertain in the Senate.
While waiting for Congress to evolve, President Obama, once a regular recreational marijuana smoker, could practice some evolution of his own. He could order the attorney general to conduct the study necessary to support removal of marijuana from Schedule I. Earlier this year, he told The New Yorker that he considered marijuana less dangerous than alcohol in its impact on individuals, and made it clear that he was troubled by the disproportionate number of arrests of African-Americans and Latinos on charges of possession. For that reason, he said, he supported the Colorado and Washington experiments.
“It’s important for it to go forward,” he said, referring to the state legalizations, “because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”
But a few weeks later, he told CNN that the decision on whether to change Schedule I should be left to Congress, another way of saying he doesn’t plan to do anything to end the federal ban. For too long, politicians have seen the high cost — in dollars and lives locked behind bars — of their pointless war on marijuana and chosen to do nothing. But many states have had enough, and it’s time for Washington to get out of their way.
On Monday at 4:20 p.m. Eastern Time, Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, will be taking questions about marijuana legalization at facebook.com/nytimes.
