Without federal leadership, you can
count on marijuana legalization to keep spreading one state at a time.
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How
much longer will it take before the United States declares a truce in the Drug
War?
This
latter-day prohibition is taking an immense toll. And the stakes ought to be
low, given that most Americans don’t want anyone jailed for being caught with
small amounts of pot.
But
it does require some courage to pipe up. So thank you, former Supreme Court
Justice John Paul Stevens, for joining the swelling chorus that wants to see
marijuana legalized.
“The
distinction between marijuana and alcoholic beverages is really not much of a
distinction,” Stevens said during an interview with NPR’s Scott Simon in
April.
“I
smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very
different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big
chunk of my adult life,” Obama told The New Yorker‘s David Remnick. “I don’t think it is more
dangerous than alcohol.”
Just
as the booze Prohibition failed to bring about the
United States of Teetotalers, the War on Drugs hasn’t extinguished demand for marijuana.
The
White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, better known as the drug
czar’s digs, is slowly moving from a chronically tough-on-crime approach to a
deeper focus on the public health side of the illegal drug challenge. That’s
nice, but it’s only taking whatStoptheDrugWar.org calls “baby steps in the right
direction.”
The
good news: The drug czar’s office recently set a five-year goal for reducing
deaths from drug overdoses. Its report to Congress called for measures to meet
that objective, such as encouraging state laws that grant people who try to
prevent those deaths immunity from prosecution.
The
bad news: no progress on marijuana legalization.
How
is that possible for an administration led by a president who openly admits to
having inhaled deeply and repeatedly? Well, many careers are vested in the
status quo. Take Corrections Corporation of America, a giant private prison
outfit. Can it make a profit on imprisoning just heroin and cocaine dealers,
without jailing the pot purveyors too?
Maybe,
but the company isn’t eager to find out. And what on Earth would happen to the
men and women in the Drug Enforcement Administration if the bud beat were to
dry up?
That
and congressional deadlock explains why most of our national experiment with
withdrawal from prohibition is taking place at the state and local level. A
total of 23 states allow the sale and use of medical marijuana.
Colorado
and Washington took the next logical step and now let people buy pot for
recreational use. Oregon could be next if its voters approve a marijuana
ballot initiative on Election Day. The District of Columbia’s government passed
a similar measure that House Republicans are trying to block. Obama is threatening to veto the related legislation.
Without
federal leadership, you can count on legalization to keep spreading one state
at a time and posing daunting logistical challenges. Like how to handle the
money.
Federal
regulations prohibit banks from trafficking in drug dollars, legal or not. So
for now, marijuana dealers must operate on an all-cash basis. All those
Benjamins make legal marijuana businesses both crime targets and a growth
market for the armored car industry.
Legal
pot’s many benefits include a new tax revenue stream. If the government were to
stop locking up 750,000 people a year for no good reason it would save
money and all those non-violent “offenders” wouldn’t have their lives wrecked.
Plus, growers would stopsquandering
electricity on growing one of America’s top cash crops indoors.
It’s
high time this country ended its addiction to the Drug War.
Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor
of OtherWords, a non-profit national
editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is
a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut.
OtherWords.org
