DRUG REFORMERS ARE REGROUPING

The post-election e-mails and faxes from the Drug Policy Alliance tried
to put as cheerful a face on it as possible, noting in a subhead that
since 1996 voters have approved 19 of 24 state drug-policy reform
initiatives. But releases before the election had crowed that voters had
placed themselves on the reform side 17 of 19 times. The reformers lost
three and won two on Nov. 5, and the ones they lost were more prominent
and potentially more important.

The midterm election this year, then, was a significant setback for a
drug reform movement that had been riding fairly high with shrewdly
selected issues centered around medical marijuana patients and the idea
of treatment rather than incarceration for non-violent offenders.

Time Magazine s cover story for Nov. 11 (released before the election)
highlighted this success and predicted more, noting that 80 percent of
Americans support making marijuana available medicinally and 72 percent
prefer fines rather than jail for marijuana possession. Although it
included more than its fair share of bad puns and clever winks to
hippieness (a trivializing temptation no journalist seems able to
resist), the Time article included a fairly accurate assessment of the
relatively small health risks associated with smoking cannabis and
acknowledged (as government spokesmen almost never do) that there is
solid evidence for some medical benefits.

But the voters spoiled the story, rejecting a measure in Ohio that would
have provided treatment rather than incarceration for simple possession
offenders (similar to Prop. 36, which California voters passed and which
is working fairly well), and measures that would have effectively
legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana for any purpose in
Nevada and Arizona.

It wasn t a clean sweep for the drug warriors. Voters in Washington,
D.C., approved a measure to require treatment instead of jail with a 78
percent majority but Congress, which runs the district, probably won t
allow it to go into effect. In Massachusetts, 13 of 19 local nonbinding
resolutions instructing legislators to vote for making marijuana
possession a civil rather than criminal offense passed.

In San Francisco voters approved a measure directing city officials to
look into having the city grow and distribute cannabis to patients who
qualify for it.

On balance, however, the election results were a setback for drug
reformers.

Consequently I was especially interested to attend a national conference
of the Marijuana Policy Project and Students for Sensible Drug Policies
held last weekend at the Anaheim Hilton. The pre-publicity suggested it
would be something of a triumphal affair, celebrating Tuesday s
victories and planning the next steps. It turned out to be more sober
and sobering: a reassessment of where the movement stands.

When I talked to Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy
Alliance, which gets about a third of its funding from billionaire
currency speculator George Soros, the preceding Friday, he was feeling
fairly down-in-the-dumps. It wasn t just the election results but a
funding crisis that had come up that week, he said.

Ethan confessed that he didn t know where to go from here. Should the
movement return to a narrow focus on medical marijuana? Should it
withdraw from the political arena for a while and focus on educational
activities? Should it concentrate on court cases? He said he just didn t
know.

By Sunday, however, when he gave the featured luncheon address, he was
considerably more upbeat. He still didn t know what the next steps would
be, he said, but he felt confident the drug reform movement would be up
to taking them. Still, he challenged those in the audience to be more
realistic, more willing to empathize with people who are uneasy about
reform, more open to forming coalitions, more determined to do the hard
and sometimes thankless work of persuasion and organizing.

You can t educate your parents unless you can put yourselves in their
shoes, he told the students in the audience, and understand the fears
of so many American parents, who have the occasional desire to put their
budding adolescents in a cocoon for a few years to protect them from all
the perils out there. Parents know they have to let go and let their
kids grow up and face their own problems, but they don t want to see
them get hurt or become zombies.

Drug reformers tend to be either leftists, who see drug law reform as a
social justice issue, or libertarians, who see it as a freedom issue,
Nadelmann noted. Unless they are willing to work with others who don t
necessarily share all their values, to compromise on strategy and
tactics, to reach out to those who are decent but skeptical, they will
not win.

He placed the American flag on the podium, led the audience in the
pledge of allegiance, and urged drug reformers to embrace our
Americanism and communicate to others that those who criticize the drug
war are in tune with the hope of the founders that this would be a
country with liberty and justice for all.

What moved Ethan Nadelmann toward more optimistic determination? I think
it was seeing a comprehensive program that stressed bringing others in,
working with churches, unions and professional associations, and keeping
the message non-hysterical and grounded in solid science.

Two doctors presented their latest findings on the usefulness of medical
marijuana, and a panel of doctors vowed to be more active within the
medical community. Sessions were devoted to communicating with the media
and dissecting government propaganda. A new group, Americans for Safe
Access, synopsized its comprehensive training program for medical
marijuana patients and activists. A panel of conservatives, including
Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray, explained how to
promote alliances across ideological lines.

I talked to Rob Kampia, president of the Marijuana Policy Project, about
why the initiatives in Ohio, Nevada and Arizona had failed. He noted the
extraordinary activism of drug czar John Walters in all three states,
which probably included the illegal use of taxpayer funds in political
campaigns (independent journalist Dan Forbes did a fairly comprehensive
article for alternet.com) and featured numerous distortions, but said
that probably wasn t the deciding factor.

In Ohio, the attorney general, who writes the ballot summaries, included
dismissal of charges but didn t mention drug treatment, skewing the
perception of a measure virtually identical to California s Prop. 36.

Kampia acknowledged that decriminalizing possession of up to three
ounces of marijuana (Nevada) and virtual decriminalization (Arizona)
were probably premature though he noted that 39 percent in Nevada and
43 percent in Arizona voted yes, which are high-water marks for
outright decriminalization, more than support it in most polls. He noted
that Republicans had an especially effective get-out-the-vote effort in
Nevada this year, and Republicans tend to oppose drug-law reform by
about a two-to-one margin. So where does the reform movement stand now?
Chastened but very much alive.

The Ninth Circuit federal appeals court on Oct. 29 sustained an
injunction forbidding the federal government from revoking the
controlled-substances license or even investigating California doctors
who recommend marijuana to their patients. The Ninth Circuit does get
reversed more often than other circuits, but this Supreme Court has been
solicitous of First Amendment rights, on which this ruling was based.
The concurring opinion by Judge Alex Kozinski, stressing the legitimate
interests of seriously ill patients and of states seeking to innovate
within a federalist system, was especially powerful. It should probably
be reprinted and distributed widely.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has raided numerous medical
marijuana cooperatives in California and effectively shut them down,
apparently focusing on those that have tried to operate in as
above-board and clean a fashion as possible, e.g., Santa Cruz,
Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego. That has been discouraging, but it has
also provoked a negative response. California Attorney General Bill
Lockyer sent a sharply worded letter to DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson
after the Santa Cruz raid, and a Sept. 23 rally in Sacramento drew a
large crowd and symbolic civil disobedience.

While these raids have been debilitating, several Santa Cruz, Los
Angeles have not been followed by formal charges being filed. It may
be that the feds doubt whether they can get a California jury to convict
on medical marijuana charges and since federal judges fairly often
don t allow testimony about medical use or illness to be introduced at
trial, any Californian called to a jury on any federal marijuana case
might be well-advised to assume it s a medical marijuana case and vote
to acquit. In San Diego, the preliminary phases of Steve McWilliams
case will begin in December. Steve has good legal representation and
feels confident.

In Oakland, Ed Rosenthal not affiliated with the Oakland cooperative
but accused of growing for San Francisco clubs has assembled a good
legal team and isn t planning on jail. Both cases should get extensive
local news coverage and stimulate discussion.

Lynn and Judy Osburn in Ventura County are in worse shape and Orange
County s Marvin Chavez is back in state prison. The battle in the courts
is a mixed affair, and a number of medical marijuana activists will be
forced to pay dearly for their convictions and compassion.

But drug-law reformers, while somewhat bloodied, are not going away.
Ethan Nadelmann hopes they will be able to persuade Democrats, in the
process of reassessing their priorities and licking their wounds, to
embrace this cause. Maybe they will, maybe they won t. But it won t be
for lack of effort by reformers.

Alan Bock is author of Waiting to Inhale: The Politics of Medical
Marijuana, Seven Locks Press 2001


Nov. 17, 2002 Orange County Register Column
By Alan W. Bock
Senior editorial writer for The Register
http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=3D11797§ion=3DCOMMEN=
TARY&year=3D2002&month=3D11&day=3D16