Springfield Republican endorses decrim of marijuana

I was pleased yesterday morning to see that the Springfield Republican has endorsed Question Two. Here's the editorial:

Marijuana reform right for Bay State by The Republican Newsroom, Wed., Oct. 22, 2008

You have friends and family members and co-workers who have smoked marijuana. You may have even indulged a bit yourself back in the day.

Few people today would argue that someone who had been caught with a small amount of marijuana for his or her own personal use should be denied, say, a job. Or a student loan. Or an apartment. Or a professional license.

But that's exactly what could happen under current laws that are in place in Massachusetts. Question 2 on the November ballot seeks to right that wrong by making possession of an ounce or less - for personal use - a civil rather than a criminal offense.

Opponents of Question 2 - most notably district attorneys - argue that first-time offenders are directed to programs outside the criminal-justice system and thus leave no record of their transgression. But that's because the district attorneys currently in office choose to handle it that way. A successor could opt for a completely different tack, marking each offender for life.

Question 2 takes that possibility off the table.

Someone caught with a bit of pot would have the marijuana confiscated, would be assessed a $100 fine - and that would be that. There would be no criminal proceedings, no record to be accessed.

Question 2 is sound and sensible public policy.

It does not make marijuana legal. It does not make it OK to operate a motor vehicle under the influence of marijuana. It does not change a single law on the books regarding the sale or distribution of marijuana.

And it deals with youthful offenders in the most rational way: by getting the family involved. Juveniles caught with marijuana would have the citation delivered to a parent or guardian, and would have to complete a drug awareness program and perform community service.

Across the nation, there are 11 states that have passed laws similar to Question 2. Some have been in place for decades, and there is no evidence whatsoever that the change has led to increased marijuana use or a decrease in general order.

This reform is right for Massachusetts. We urge voters on Nov. 4 to support Question 2.

In the Comments section following the editorial, one woman worried that if Question Two passes, her mother's nurse, the school nurse and the school bus driver will all be able to smoke pot without consequences. This attitude always astounds me-- that people think that others would start smoking pot if it were decriminalized. If they wouldn't start smoking, why would others? In any case, the eleven other states that have decriminalized small amounts of marijuana have not seen any increase in marijuana use. So why should it happen here?

Arise and a few other organizations were going to have a press conference in support of Question Two next week but we were dissuaded from doing so by decisionmakers at the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy. Somehow the half dozen messages we've left at their office since this summer, saying we wanted to be involved in the campaign, didn't get through until just this week. Their position is, why give the district attorneys and other opponents a platform from which to respond? Instead, CSMJ is focusing on paid political ads. Check out their website for some great examples. You may have already seen the ads on TV or hreard them on the radio. Let's hope that hearing law enforcement officials say that it's time for reform will change enough minds.

Have the state DAs broken campaign Finance Laws?

From AP:

Backers of Mass. Pro-pot Issue Take On Opponents

teve LeBlanc, Associated Press Writer

September 17, 2008

Associated Press

BOSTON — Backers of a pro-marijuana ballot initiative charged Wednesday that 11 district attorneys from Massachusetts violated campaign finance laws and twisted the truth about the question.

Whitney Taylor of the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy said the DAs raised and spent money to oppose the question before forming their Coalition to Save Our Streets. Campaign finance laws require groups to form a committee before raising and spending money.

The question would make possession of an ounce or less of marijuana a civil rather than criminal offense punishable by a $100 fine.

Opponents say such a change in law would essentially normalize use of marijuana, while supporter say it would reduce a burden on the criminal justice system by sparing those found with small amounts from facing a criminal record and jail.

Taylor's group has filed complaints with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance and the Attorney General's office against the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association and the public relations firm hired to handle opposition to the question.

"This was an attempt to keep their organization as covert as they could for as long a possible," Taylor said. The group also named Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett and Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz individually.

The district attorneys planned their own press conference later Wednesday.

Taylor said state records show the district attorneys began raising money as early as July 18, but didn't file a statement of organization with the state until Sept. 5.

Taylor's group has raised far greater sums than the district attorney's group, according to campaign finance reports.

The district attorneys raised just $27,670, virtually all of it from their own campaign accounts, while Taylor group has raised nearly $650,000.

The vast majority of the money raised by Taylor's group came from outside Massachusetts, including a $400,000 donation from billionaire financier and liberal activist George Soros and $180,000 from the Washington DC-based Marijuana Policy Project.

Taylor also faulted the district attorneys for using their state web site to urge voters to oppose the question, and for misrepresenting the initiative.

In a statement on the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association web site, the district attorneys say if the question is approved "any person may carry and use marijuana at any time, thus 'normalizing' its use."

The district attorneys and other critics say the question could threaten recent positive trends in marijuana use among teens. They also said there's a link between marijuana use and crime, car accidents and workplace safety.

"Do you really want to encourage your kids to smoke dope?" a statement on the DA's web site reads in part.

The district attorneys also said that existing law is fair.

Massachusetts law requires that a first-time drug offender be placed on probation and that, at the successful conclusion of probation, "the case shall be dismissed and the record shall be sealed," according to their statement.

If the question is approved, Massachusetts would become the 13th state to lift or ease criminal penalties on marijuana possession.

Support Question Two: decriminalize less an an ounce of marijuana

Five weeks until the election. Here in Massachusetts, we've got an opportunity to turn possession of small amounts of marijuana from a criminal to a civil offense.

The Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy released a list of endorsers at a Boston press conference yesterday. Endorsers include:

• Tom Kiley, Massachusetts' first assistant attorney general
• Sergeant Howard Donohue, a 33-year veteran of the Boston Police Department
• Lieutenant Thomas W. Nolan, a 30-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, now a professor at Boston University
• Dr. Robert Meenan, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health
• Lester Grinspoon, M.D., associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
• Jeffrey Miron, Ph.D, senior lecturer in the Harvard University Department of Economics
• Massachusetts state Sen. Patricia Jehlen (D), chair of the Joint Committee on Elder Affairs and vice-chair of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight
• Massachusetts state Rep. Frank Smizik (D), chair of the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture
• John H. Halpern, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
• Charles Barron, professor at Boston College School of Law
• ACLU of Massachusetts
• the Union of Minority Neighborhoods

All eleven Massachusetts District Attorneys have signed onto a statement against Question Two at their website which you can find here. Although the DAs would like to portray Question Two as outside the mainstream, the truth is that more and more people, including current and former law enforcement officials, see the drug war as a war that is meant to be waged, not won.

Last Saturday, the Boston Globe ran the following editorial from a law enforcement officer. Read it well and then VOTE YES ON QUESTION TWO.

The solution to the failed drug war

By Jack A. Cole September 13, 2008

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/09/13/the_solution_to_the_failed_drug_war/

WAR AND RACE dominate the presidential campaign, but one nation-shaping war with profound racial consequences eludes the political radar: the drug war.

I was a frontline soldier in this self-perpetuating, ineffectual effort that has swallowed more than a trillion tax dollars and currently yields nearly 2 million arrests every year for nonviolent offenses. I helped incarcerate some 1,000 young people as part of this irredeemably wrongheaded attempt to arrest our way out of our drug problems. Those arrests will follow them to their graves.

I know they follow me.

But while no other country locks up as large a percentage of its citizens, the specific impact on minority families has been one step short of the reinstitution of slavery: from media portrayals of marijuana-crazed Mexicans, opium-crazed Asians, and cocaine-crazed blacks, this war has always been about race.

The 1980s produced a jump in the number of cocaine-related stories focused on minority use, yielding grave concern and a dramatic increase in the minority prison population. Many people, of course, assumed that minorities were disproportionately involved in drugs. Even a seemingly street-wise show like "The Wire," which correctly abandoned all hope for this war, supported that impression, portraying virtual swarms of drug-involved blacks.

In fact, according to Federal Household Surveys, whites, blacks, and Hispanics use drugs in direct proportion to their percentage of the population. So, for example, blacks, who are 13 percent of our population, account for 13 percent of our drug use. Yet, according to US Bureau of Justice Statistics, of convicted defendants, 33 percent of whites received a prison sentence and 51 percent of African-Americans received prison sentences. Moreover, the US Sentencing Commission found that black drug defendants receive considerably longer average prison terms than do whites for comparable crimes.

This is not a geographical fluke: a 2007 Justice Policy Institute study found that in Florida blacks were 75 times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs while driving than whites; in 1991, blacks were 7 percent of St. Paul's population but 62 percent of those arrested on drug charges; and in Onondaga Country, Syracuse, N.Y., black people are currently 99 times more likely to go to prison for drugs than white people.

There are more black men in US prisons today than there were slaves in 1840, and they are being used for the same purpose; working for private corporations at 16 to 20 cents an hour. Half the states have private, for-profit prisons whose lobbyists are demanding longer mandatory-minimum prison sentences. Indeed, American blacks are incarcerated at nearly eight times the level of South African blacks during the height of apartheid.

Inner-city communities are devastated not by drug use but by the same turf-war street violence that accompanied alcohol prohibition and that dramatically decreased once that drug was legalized and regulated. Almost one in seven African-Americans are denied voting rights largely because of drug arrests, and countless minorities are denied intact families, college loans, driver's licenses, and jobs because of selective enforcement of a prohibition that, even fairly enforced, prevents no one from using drugs.

But things are changing, as resistance grows in precisely those communities hardest hit by this failed policy.

In 2006, the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators passed a resolution condemning the failed war on drugs and calling for treatment rather than incarceration. That resolution was echoed by a similar resolution passed unanimously by all 225 mayors at their national conference in 2007. And a national association of black police officers is expected to officially endorse the call for an end to drug prohibition.

I represent Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an international organization of sworn antidrug warriors who know that we must end this prohibition in order to legalize and regulate all drugs, thus wresting control from the cartels and street thugs who prey on children.

Ending this prohibition is a singularly potent civil rights issue. It is a remarkable movement, led by both white and minority law enforcement officials.

In an election infused with racial overtones, we wonder which politicians will be brave enough to follow.

Jack A. Cole is executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

Will we decriminalize marijuana in Massachusetts?

This November, Massachusetts voters will have a chance to vote on a proposal to decriminalize possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, turning it instead into a civil offense punishable by a fine.

If our state mirrors the national average, then probably a third of Massachusetts residents have smoked marijuana. Nationally, 97 million Americans admit to have tried it. I myself have smoked with a number of people whose names would be well-known in the region. Of course, this was in the late 70's and early 80's, before the War on Drugs had reached the extreme proportions that it has now.

The number of people who are being incarcerated for drug offenses in this country continues to rise. 43.9 percent of the nearly two million arrests for drug abuse violations in 2006 were for marijuana offenses. Of these, 738,916 people were arrested for possession alone.

Besides the impact of incarceration on those incarcerated, the War on Drugs costs an astounding amount of money and is responsible for many deaths. In 1999, the combined local, state and federal expenditures to fight this War on Drugs exceeded $30 billion. The U.S. is getting ready to send at least $350 billion to Mexico to help its Drug War efforts.

And look how well it's working!

People may agree or disagree on the harm marijuana does, yet I can't imagine anyone making a sensible case for marijuana's doing more harm than two legal substances, alcohol and tobacco. Florida, in fact, just did a study on the lethality of legal prescription drugs compared to illegal drugs (alcohol and tobacco not included) that showed that deaths caused by misuse of legally prescribed drugs was three times as great as deaths from illegal drugs. By the way, the study could find no deaths linked to marijuana use.

If the Massachusetts ballot initiative is passed, the state will save about $30 million next year-- the current cost of low-level marijuana possession arrests and proseecution. It will also:

• Amend the current criminal statutes so that adults possessing an ounce or less of marijuana for personal use would be charged with a civil infraction and fined.
• Remove the threat of a CORI report for minor marijuana possession charges.
• Maintain current penalties for selling, growing, and trafficking marijuana, as well as the prohibition against driving under the influence of marijuana. Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy.
  

I hope there will be forums and opportunities to talk about this referendum proposal as we head toward fall elections. If, for some reason, you're unsure about the wisdom of decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana, please take the time to educate yourself. But I already know how I'm voting. In both human and financial costs, we just can't afford to go on the way we're going.