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Why New Mexico should decriminalize marijuana.
No we're not stoned. Normally we have a hard time seeing eye to eye with our Republican governor, Gary Johnson. We didn't agree with him about welfare reform, school vouchers or Indian gambling. When it comes to his union-busting attempts we find ourselves scratching our heads. And for God's sake, why couldn't he have taken on Minnesota Gov. Jessie Ventura for a little head to head action? But when Johnson told the Associated Press a few weeks ago that the war on drugs wasn't working, that it was time to find some new solutions, and that he could be open to a discussion on decriminalizing marijuana, he won over this media outlet. At least on this issue.
Like Johnson, we don't necessarily condone smoking pot. But since everyone has been so quick to denounce such a measure, we wanted to point out there are legitimate arguments in favor of decriminalizing marijuana.
Many sensible people from lawyers to nurses share Johnson's belief that it's time to reform drug laws, and that smoking pot shouldn't be a crime. "What Johnson has done is attempt to take away the stigma of even talking about it," says David Serna, an Albuquerque criminal defense attorney.
But talk isn't all that's happening. The newly formed New Mexico Alliance for Drug Policy Reform is actively courting members, and plans to get out there to support Johnson in the coming months. Forums on drug use and policies are planned, and several lawsuits challenging drug laws soon will be filed. And much of the activity is because Johnson spoke out.
"I think Governor Johnson should be commended for the courage he demonstrated in bringing this issue to the public for discussion," says Steve Bunch, an attorney and president of the New Mexico Drug Policy Foundation. "So much has happened in these last few weeks, and it's all because of Johnson. He has ***image5***created a fire storm" We were unable to talk to Johnson for this story. But according to his office he raised the issue of drug policy because "he's reality based," said spokeswoman Diane Kinderwater. "When he looks at the laws he deals in reality. And what we have on the books concerning drugs just aren't solving the problem. He's looking for something more workable."
"He's a reasonable person when it comes to issues of personal privacy and personal freedom," says Albuquerque lawyer John McCall, a former Green Party candidate for attorney general. "The governor understands people can be responsible, not just in using Prozac and Valium, but in using other less harmful drugs that are illegal for political issues."
We already know that even talking about decriminalization makes the GOP and local law enforcement very nervous. "The law is still the number-one deterrent when it comes to children not using drugs," says state Public Safety Secretary Darren White. "I'd like to try to fight the problem without my hands tied behind my back. I'm not ready to throw up the white flag yet."
But believe it or not, there are people cheering Johnson on. We thought we'd layout the five top reasons for decriminalizing marijuana.
1. Hysteria Laws
The best reason for decriminalizing marijuana is that there is no good reason it's illegal in the first place. Its entire 60-year-history as an outlaw drug stems from misconception and, in some cases, hysteria.
Between 1914 and 1931, 29 states made possession or use of marijuana a criminal offense. Of those 29 states, 17 of them were west of the Mississippi. According to news reports at the time, fears about marijuana were widely associated with fears about Mexican immigrants and crime. Throughout the I930s, the media continued to link marijuana with crime, and pressure for laws against the drug continued to mount.
Congress passed the "Marijuana Tax Act of 1937," which required people to pay a $1 tax if they used pot for medicinal purposes and $100 if they used it for recreational purposes. Noncompliance ***image4***was punishable by a fine of up to $2,000 and/or a prison sentence of up to five years. Concern about pot declined during World War II. After the use tax was passed, marijuana prosecution remained a low priority until the 1950s. Marijuana again was considered a culprit during the long-hair/rock music/civil disobedience environment of the I960s, which led to the Narcotics Drug Control Act of 1965. This law increased the penalties for selling both pot and heroin.
The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 reclassified marijuana, along with heroin and LSD, as a Schedule 1 drug. which means that it is a drug with high potential for abuse and addiction and with no recognized medical use. It remains in this classification today.
The I940s warning cards about marijuana read, for example: "Beware! Young and Old-People in All Walks of life! This may be handed to you by the friendly stranger. It contains the Killer Drug 'Marijuana': a powerful narcotic in which lurks Murder! Insanity! Death!"
The New Mexico Drug Enforcement Advisory Council isn't claiming that marijuana causes death, but in the week following Johnson's announcement, it swiftly voted to oppose drug decriminalization-arguing that to do so would send a wrong message to New Mexicans, and that drug addicts from other states might think this was the place to come and get stoned. However, criminal penalties for possession of marijuana already have been removed in nine states, with no reports of any of those places receiving a huge influx of drug addicts.
Albuquerque attorney McCall thinks the marijuana laws are ridiculous. He plans to challenge the 1937 tax law in a federal case he's getting ready to file on behalf of several New Mexico groups opposed to marijuana's illegality. "One of the challenges in that lawsuit will be that the original stamp tax act was based on a lie," says McCall "The lie that it was based on was that marijuana was dangerous to society and that it was causing black people and other minorities to become violent and to rape white women."
McCall has worked on several other cases involving marijuana, including one against Liddie Palmer, a curandera arrested for possession of pot plants she used in traditional treatments for arthritis (that case eventually was dropped). He recently convinced the state Court of Appeals that growing marijuana was not the equivalent of manufacturing a drug-a case that could have widespread precedent. "I've always believed that prohibition is not an appropriate way to address issues around drugs," says McCall. "My dad is an 83-year-old Republican and he also believes prohibition is wrong, so I don't think it's something isolated in one political spectrum."
Finally, although the mere thought of decriminalizing marijuana caused a huge outcry in the past few weeks, New Mexico's laws are already much less stringent than in other places. Unlike some states that require judges to sentence offenders for a set amount of time (known as mandatory minimum sentencing, also the rule at the federal level), New Mexico allows conditional release or alternative sentencing for people who are convicted for the first time. Possession sentences run from 0 to 15 days in jail and fines of $50 to $100 for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana to a three-year sentence for possession of 100 pounds. Distributing dope to a minor can earn an offender a three-year sentence and a $5,000 fine.
2. Crime and Punishment
Even though New Mexico's marijuana laws are far from the most Draconian, arrests, prosecution and imprisonment do take a toll on law enforcement resources. In fact, one of the strongest arguments for decriminalizing marijuana is that despite the amount of time and money spent on arresting people for it, use ***image3***doesn't seem to decline. Right now, there are 37,000 people incarcerated across the country, not for selling weed or growing it, but just for smoking it. Of course, not everyone arrested for smoking pot goes to jail; some just have to endure the horror of getting arrested, going to court and perhaps having their property seized. In 1997 alone, state and local law officers arrested more than 695,000 people in the U.S. for marijuana violations-approximately 87 percent of which were just for possession. Serna is a former prosecutor in the Bernalillo district attorney's office, and has served on the national legal committee for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws for more than 14 years. A large number of the cases he handles now as a criminal defense lawyer involve marijuana possession or cultivation. "We spend so much goddamn money on interdicting drugs and arresting people and prosecuting people and incarcerating people," he says woefully. "That money could be used for education and drug abuse awareness."
When Serna was a prosecutor, he wouldn't prosecute any drug case. "It's always been my opinion that, at least with regard to marijuana, the war on drugs is in large part a war on independent thinking, and that the people who are being prosecuted for marijuana are often people that the government disapproves of." And, says Serna, it's become worse since the time when he worked for the government. "Then we generally saw marijuana being charged when the defendant was charged with some other crime and marijuana happened to be involved; they would add a marijuana charge into the mix. I didn't see what I see today, which is people being charged strictly for marijuana."
Beyond the cost ($128 billion annually at the federal level) of arresting and imprisoning people for smoking or possessing pot, there's also the less tangible effect that drug laws have, says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the D.C.-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "We're talking about the precipitous loss of civil liberties," he says. "Mandatory minimum sentencing. drug testing. all grow out of the general war on drugs and it creates moral dissidence. People don't respect the law, and in a civil society, the thing that binds us all together is the respect of law and morality. This law breeds disrespect for the law."
It also tends to breed situations that it's difficult to reconcile with justice. For example, in 1997 an Oklahoma man, William ***image6***Foster, who claims to have been growing 10 marijuana plants and some cuttings that he used to alleviate the pain of arthritis, was sentenced to 93 years in jail. Under federal law, large-scale cultivators and dealers of pot can be sentenced to death. In 1997, U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who has admitted to smoking pot, introduced the "Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1997; which has the potential to sentence first offenders bringing less than two ounces of marijuana across the border to life in prison without parole.
Another Albuquerque group, Delta-9, also is supporting the effort to decriminalize marijuana use. Bruce Bush, an instructor at the Technical Vocational Institute in Albuquerque, is the co-founder of Delta-9, named after Delta-9-THC, the specific cannabinoid in marijuana. He also was a Libertarian candidate the U.S. Senate in the race with Republican Heather Wilson, Democrat Phil Maloof and Green Bob Anderson. Bush says, "The question I always asked Heather Wilson, when they would let me in the debates, was which is worse: smoking a joint to make yourself feel better or putting someone in jail who hasn't hurt anybody?"
3. For Your Health
Here's a good reason marijuana should be legal in New Mexico-it already is. Under some circumstances, anyway. Since the 1970s, medical patients have access to marijuana, if used in a controlled research context. The rub is, we've got the law, but we don't have the research program.
New Mexicans who believe marijuana should be legal for medical purposes plan to file a lawsuit against the state as early as next week.
Although marijuana still is classified as a drug with no medicinal effect, there is a thriving nationwide movement to allow it to be used for everything from nausea management for chemotherapy patients to glaucoma patients. Medical studies show it does help to reduce nausea in AIDS sufferers and to relieve eye pressure for number of medical conditions. Support for medical access to it has come from the AIDS Action Council, American Academy of Family Physicians, the New England Journal of Medicine and others. Voters in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have voted in favor of ballot initiatives that remove criminal penalties for sick people who grow or possess medicinal marijuana.
In 1978, New Mexico's Legislature passed the Controlled Substances Therapeutic Research Act, which allowed for the use of medical marijuana under research controls. It was later renamed the Lynn Pierson Therapeutic Research Program after a cancer patient who led the crusade for medical marijuana in New Mexico. Pierson was admitted to the program, but died before it was started. The program ran through the early 1980s with more than 250 patients statewide. In 1991, the federal government shut down the program it had in place to supply marijuana to research programs like the one in New Mexico. Today, according to numerous sources, only eight people in the United States receive medical marijuana from the government. So while numerous states have laws allowing for its use under medicinal purposes, there is no legal way to acquire it under federal law. In fact, just last week a federal judge sentenced a 52-year-old California man to 27 months in prison who had received a prescription for medical marijuana under the state's 1996 "Compassionate Use Act," and consequently had grown marijuana for his own and other patients' use.
Despite the ongoing conflict between state laws allowing medical marijuana use and federal laws prohibiting possession, cultivation and distribution, New Mexicans for Compassionate Use plans to file a lawsuit against the state requiring it to re-establish whatever is necessary to reactivate the medical marijuana program. The lawsuit also will address the right to use marijuana as part of a cultural or religious tradition in New Mexico, since marijuana was used in ceremonies and for various salves and medicines by Hispanic and Native American communities long before the drug became part of the popular culture.
Bryan Krumm is the president of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use, and a nurse who has used marijuana for his own pain after extensive knee surgery. He would be a candidate for New Mexico's program if it is ever re-established. He's been working without much success, to push legislation that would allow sick people to cultivate their own marijuana for medicinal use, and that would encourage the state Department of Health to set up a distribution system, thus alleviating the dependence on the federal government. His group also will be part of the federal lawsuit McCall plans to file. "We were talking about doing these suits prior to Gary Johnson's coming out," he said. "We're frustrated at this point. I certainly think there need to be regulations in place to prevent its distribution to children. I don't think you should be able to advertise it, but I don't think you should be able to advertise alcohol or tobacco. For medical use with children, there would need to be age limitations and parental consent. So far none of the state initiatives have really set up a good structure or a good model. They tend to grossly underestimate the needs of a medical patient."
4. "Gateway" Drug?
Will smoking marijuana turn you into a heroin addict? Depends on whom you talk to. At the end of July, Archbishop Michael Sheehan spoke out against drug addiction. In attendance at that meeting was the director of the New Mexico School Mental Health Initiative, who displayed a chart showing that use of marijuana leads to other drug abuse. This theory is called the "gateway theory,"-and is a leading reason some drug-addiction specialists fear any law that would condone using marijuana.
Example: the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse writes, "Children who have used marijuana ***image7***are 85 times likelier to use cocaine than children who have not used marijuana." In a 1996 Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing, U.S Sen. Orrin Hatch proclaimed, "Since marijuana use, harmful as it is in its own right, is often a prelude to the use of other drugs... [it is] doubly disastrous."
In fact, the only real connection is that because marijuana is the most popular illegal substance in the country, chances are the folks who use the less-popular ones-the "hard" ones-also have smoked weed. As Kevin Aplin, president of the Florida Cannabis Action Network, observes, "Everybody who smokes pot probably drank milk, too."
Ironically, marijuana isn't the first drug that abusers of cocaine and heroin try. They tend to start with alcohol and tobacco-both of which are legal and physically addictive, unlike pot. As far back as 1972, the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded that, yeah, marijuana isn't exactly good for you-unless it's prescribed for medical use-but its hazards have been grossly exaggerated.
So what are the real dangers? Because prohibition renders the regulation (i.e., quality control) of marijuana impossible, that which is available through criminal means sometimes is contaminated with harmful substances: pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, molds or bacteria. Another health hazard is the necessity to crudely inhale hot smoke in order to get high. If marijuana were decriminalized, the legalization of paraphernalia-the pipes, bongs, hookahs and other accoutrements you kept in your sock drawer in college-likely would lead to the development and availability of safer, more sophisticated smoking tools that would mitigate the harm on the lungs that comes from smoking anything. Currently, devices like vaporizers, which use steam to isolate the THC in the plant, are capable of cooling and filtering the smoke. These items are illegal and unavailable to the public.
5. Hypocrisy by Any Other Name
Deadly weapons, alcohol and tobacco-all highly dangerous and linked with the decline of health and public safety-are widely available in every city and town in the country. Yet marijuana, which never has been proven to endanger health, promote violent behavior or directly cause death, is a controlled substance that has kept more than 37,000 U.S. citizens in prison or jail as you read this.
Why is pot illegal? Seventy million Americans admit that they've tried it, including growing numbers of politicians such as Bill Clinton, AI Gore, Newt Gingrich and Clarence Thomas, to name a few. Of the 70 million who have experimented, more than 18 million say they've toked within the last year. Ten million of those confess to being regular marijuana smokers.
That's a lot of bong hits. And most likely, those numbers are on the low side: who knows how many people inhale, but don't want to admit it for fear of being busted (after all, doesn't pot make you paranoid)? But these kinds of numbers aren't reflected in Washington, D.C., where the federal government continues to wage the War on Pot. "We ***image8***just don't have the same impact as some of the other lobbies," says Chuck Thomas, the director of communications for Marijuana Policy Project, a D.C.-based reform lobby. "Look at the NRA. They've got three million members and a $100 million budget," he continues. "We've got four thousand members and a $100,000 budget." The legality of handguns, alcohol and tobacco presents a moral hypocrisy, but "the reason it exists is due to political issues," he says.
Thomas points to the alcohol prohibition of the earlier part of the century as an indication that making marijuana illegal doesn't help anything. "Alcohol prohibition ended through a well-funded movement," he points out. Because alcohol was made illegal for only 14 years, "people were able to notice first hand the increase in crime and related problems once alcohol was made illegal. They remembered how things were before [prohibition], and knew that outlawing alcohol only made things worse." Now, however, "we're in a strange position. We don't have a time when marijuana was legal that we can compare to our current situation." More and more, though, people are ready to discuss new solutions, and Thomas says that activism-whether grassroots petitioning or monetary-is the key to reforming marijuana laws.
Billions of dollars have been spent, the prison population of pot smokers has grown to near absurd proportion, and there has been virtually no decline in the number of adults who smoke marijuana. The war on drugs has been a failure, Governor Johnson said last month. You won't get an argument here.
Pot by Any Other Name
By Sarah Meadows
The familiar bushy greenery that is marijuana-immediately recognized by its now-iconic five-pronged leaf that's emblazoned on notebooks, T-shirts, backpacks and stickers on campuses across the nation-isn't the only member of the cannabis family. Its benign brother is hemp, a tough, fibrous and stalky plant that grows up rather than out, and that's better for paper than it is for pulling tubes.
With so much talk of legalizing pot for medical-and recreational-purposes, the debate over whether or not to legalize industrial hemp seemingly has fallen by the wayside. But actually this issue has made some progress. "[The hemp issue] is coming along," said Nicholas Lewels, who spends his days surrounded by products of this miracle plant He works at Santa Fe Hemp Company (125 E. Water St, 984-2599, www.santafehemp.com), a local store that takes advantage of the legality of imported raw hemp. Although it is illegal to grow hemp in New Mexico, selling products made from imported hemp is allowed under national import/export regulations.
Selling beautiful clothing, hats, paper products, wallets made from recycled goods and natural body care products, the store is an environmentally sustainable boutique, not the stoner-haven headshop that hemp's detractors would like you to believe it is.
With hemp products gaining a respectable place in the world of fashion, what's happening in the political arena? Quite a lot; in April, North Dakota became the first state to legalize growing industrial hemp, and Hawaii is pushing to allow it. Eleven states have received funding to research the growth and use of hemp, including New Mexico State University, thanks to the efforts of state Rep. Pauline Gubbels, (R) Bernalillo. Gubbels introduced a bill to legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp as an agricultural boost in southern New Mexico. Governor Johnson responded by allocating $50,000 in research funds at NMSU.
Why so much excitement? Because hemp is one of the most versatile-and renewable-plants in the world. It can be made into (and this is an abbreviated list), paper, plywood, rope, asbestos-free insulation, clothing, food, oil, carpeting, jewelry, beer, soap, balm, shampoo, lotion, food and beer. Hemp products can be turned into a sulfur and lead-free, relatively clean-burning diesel fuel ("a very dank fuel," according to Lewels) that does not contribute to the greenhouse effect. Really, the only thing hemp won't do is get you high, the plants grown for industrial purposes contain only trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive chemical found in regular ol' pot.
[This cover story was originally published in the August 11–17, 1999 issue of SFR.]
Why New Mexico should decriminalize marijuana.
No we're not stoned. Normally we have a hard time seeing eye to eye with our Republican governor, Gary Johnson. We didn't agree with him about welfare reform, school vouchers or Indian gambling. When it comes to his union-busting attempts we find ourselves scratching our heads. And for God's sake, why couldn't he have taken on Minnesota Gov. Jessie Ventura for a little head to head action? But when Johnson told the Associated Press a few weeks ago that the war on drugs wasn't working, that it was time to find some new solutions, and that he could be open to a discussion on decriminalizing marijuana, he won over this media outlet. At least on this issue.
Like Johnson, we don't necessarily condone smoking pot. But since everyone has been so quick to denounce such a measure, we wanted to point out there are legitimate arguments in favor of decriminalizing marijuana.
Many sensible people from lawyers to nurses share Johnson's belief that it's time to reform drug laws, and that smoking pot shouldn't be a crime. "What Johnson has done is attempt to take away the stigma of even talking about it," says David Serna, an Albuquerque criminal defense attorney.
But talk isn't all that's happening. The newly formed New Mexico Alliance for Drug Policy Reform is actively courting members, and plans to get out there to support Johnson in the coming months. Forums on drug use and policies are planned, and several lawsuits challenging drug laws soon will be filed. And much of the activity is because Johnson spoke out.
"I think Governor Johnson should be commended for the courage he demonstrated in bringing this issue to the public for discussion," says Steve Bunch, an attorney and president of the New Mexico Drug Policy Foundation. "So much has happened in these last few weeks, and it's all because of Johnson. He has ***image5***created a fire storm" We were unable to talk to Johnson for this story. But according to his office he raised the issue of drug policy because "he's reality based," said spokeswoman Diane Kinderwater. "When he looks at the laws he deals in reality. And what we have on the books concerning drugs just aren't solving the problem. He's looking for something more workable."
"He's a reasonable person when it comes to issues of personal privacy and personal freedom," says Albuquerque lawyer John McCall, a former Green Party candidate for attorney general. "The governor understands people can be responsible, not just in using Prozac and Valium, but in using other less harmful drugs that are illegal for political issues."
We already know that even talking about decriminalization makes the GOP and local law enforcement very nervous. "The law is still the number-one deterrent when it comes to children not using drugs," says state Public Safety Secretary Darren White. "I'd like to try to fight the problem without my hands tied behind my back. I'm not ready to throw up the white flag yet."
But believe it or not, there are people cheering Johnson on. We thought we'd layout the five top reasons for decriminalizing marijuana.
1. Hysteria Laws
The best reason for decriminalizing marijuana is that there is no good reason it's illegal in the first place. Its entire 60-year-history as an outlaw drug stems from misconception and, in some cases, hysteria.
Between 1914 and 1931, 29 states made possession or use of marijuana a criminal offense. Of those 29 states, 17 of them were west of the Mississippi. According to news reports at the time, fears about marijuana were widely associated with fears about Mexican immigrants and crime. Throughout the I930s, the media continued to link marijuana with crime, and pressure for laws against the drug continued to mount.
Congress passed the "Marijuana Tax Act of 1937," which required people to pay a $1 tax if they used pot for medicinal purposes and $100 if they used it for recreational purposes. Noncompliance ***image4***was punishable by a fine of up to $2,000 and/or a prison sentence of up to five years. Concern about pot declined during World War II. After the use tax was passed, marijuana prosecution remained a low priority until the 1950s. Marijuana again was considered a culprit during the long-hair/rock music/civil disobedience environment of the I960s, which led to the Narcotics Drug Control Act of 1965. This law increased the penalties for selling both pot and heroin.
The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 reclassified marijuana, along with heroin and LSD, as a Schedule 1 drug. which means that it is a drug with high potential for abuse and addiction and with no recognized medical use. It remains in this classification today.
The I940s warning cards about marijuana read, for example: "Beware! Young and Old-People in All Walks of life! This may be handed to you by the friendly stranger. It contains the Killer Drug 'Marijuana': a powerful narcotic in which lurks Murder! Insanity! Death!"
The New Mexico Drug Enforcement Advisory Council isn't claiming that marijuana causes death, but in the week following Johnson's announcement, it swiftly voted to oppose drug decriminalization-arguing that to do so would send a wrong message to New Mexicans, and that drug addicts from other states might think this was the place to come and get stoned. However, criminal penalties for possession of marijuana already have been removed in nine states, with no reports of any of those places receiving a huge influx of drug addicts.
Albuquerque attorney McCall thinks the marijuana laws are ridiculous. He plans to challenge the 1937 tax law in a federal case he's getting ready to file on behalf of several New Mexico groups opposed to marijuana's illegality. "One of the challenges in that lawsuit will be that the original stamp tax act was based on a lie," says McCall "The lie that it was based on was that marijuana was dangerous to society and that it was causing black people and other minorities to become violent and to rape white women."
McCall has worked on several other cases involving marijuana, including one against Liddie Palmer, a curandera arrested for possession of pot plants she used in traditional treatments for arthritis (that case eventually was dropped). He recently convinced the state Court of Appeals that growing marijuana was not the equivalent of manufacturing a drug-a case that could have widespread precedent. "I've always believed that prohibition is not an appropriate way to address issues around drugs," says McCall. "My dad is an 83-year-old Republican and he also believes prohibition is wrong, so I don't think it's something isolated in one political spectrum."
Finally, although the mere thought of decriminalizing marijuana caused a huge outcry in the past few weeks, New Mexico's laws are already much less stringent than in other places. Unlike some states that require judges to sentence offenders for a set amount of time (known as mandatory minimum sentencing, also the rule at the federal level), New Mexico allows conditional release or alternative sentencing for people who are convicted for the first time. Possession sentences run from 0 to 15 days in jail and fines of $50 to $100 for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana to a three-year sentence for possession of 100 pounds. Distributing dope to a minor can earn an offender a three-year sentence and a $5,000 fine.
2. Crime and Punishment
Even though New Mexico's marijuana laws are far from the most Draconian, arrests, prosecution and imprisonment do take a toll on law enforcement resources. In fact, one of the strongest arguments for decriminalizing marijuana is that despite the amount of time and money spent on arresting people for it, use ***image3***doesn't seem to decline. Right now, there are 37,000 people incarcerated across the country, not for selling weed or growing it, but just for smoking it. Of course, not everyone arrested for smoking pot goes to jail; some just have to endure the horror of getting arrested, going to court and perhaps having their property seized. In 1997 alone, state and local law officers arrested more than 695,000 people in the U.S. for marijuana violations-approximately 87 percent of which were just for possession. Serna is a former prosecutor in the Bernalillo district attorney's office, and has served on the national legal committee for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws for more than 14 years. A large number of the cases he handles now as a criminal defense lawyer involve marijuana possession or cultivation. "We spend so much goddamn money on interdicting drugs and arresting people and prosecuting people and incarcerating people," he says woefully. "That money could be used for education and drug abuse awareness."
When Serna was a prosecutor, he wouldn't prosecute any drug case. "It's always been my opinion that, at least with regard to marijuana, the war on drugs is in large part a war on independent thinking, and that the people who are being prosecuted for marijuana are often people that the government disapproves of." And, says Serna, it's become worse since the time when he worked for the government. "Then we generally saw marijuana being charged when the defendant was charged with some other crime and marijuana happened to be involved; they would add a marijuana charge into the mix. I didn't see what I see today, which is people being charged strictly for marijuana."
Beyond the cost ($128 billion annually at the federal level) of arresting and imprisoning people for smoking or possessing pot, there's also the less tangible effect that drug laws have, says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the D.C.-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "We're talking about the precipitous loss of civil liberties," he says. "Mandatory minimum sentencing. drug testing. all grow out of the general war on drugs and it creates moral dissidence. People don't respect the law, and in a civil society, the thing that binds us all together is the respect of law and morality. This law breeds disrespect for the law."
It also tends to breed situations that it's difficult to reconcile with justice. For example, in 1997 an Oklahoma man, William ***image6***Foster, who claims to have been growing 10 marijuana plants and some cuttings that he used to alleviate the pain of arthritis, was sentenced to 93 years in jail. Under federal law, large-scale cultivators and dealers of pot can be sentenced to death. In 1997, U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who has admitted to smoking pot, introduced the "Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1997; which has the potential to sentence first offenders bringing less than two ounces of marijuana across the border to life in prison without parole.
Another Albuquerque group, Delta-9, also is supporting the effort to decriminalize marijuana use. Bruce Bush, an instructor at the Technical Vocational Institute in Albuquerque, is the co-founder of Delta-9, named after Delta-9-THC, the specific cannabinoid in marijuana. He also was a Libertarian candidate the U.S. Senate in the race with Republican Heather Wilson, Democrat Phil Maloof and Green Bob Anderson. Bush says, "The question I always asked Heather Wilson, when they would let me in the debates, was which is worse: smoking a joint to make yourself feel better or putting someone in jail who hasn't hurt anybody?"
3. For Your Health
Here's a good reason marijuana should be legal in New Mexico-it already is. Under some circumstances, anyway. Since the 1970s, medical patients have access to marijuana, if used in a controlled research context. The rub is, we've got the law, but we don't have the research program.
New Mexicans who believe marijuana should be legal for medical purposes plan to file a lawsuit against the state as early as next week.
Although marijuana still is classified as a drug with no medicinal effect, there is a thriving nationwide movement to allow it to be used for everything from nausea management for chemotherapy patients to glaucoma patients. Medical studies show it does help to reduce nausea in AIDS sufferers and to relieve eye pressure for number of medical conditions. Support for medical access to it has come from the AIDS Action Council, American Academy of Family Physicians, the New England Journal of Medicine and others. Voters in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have voted in favor of ballot initiatives that remove criminal penalties for sick people who grow or possess medicinal marijuana.
In 1978, New Mexico's Legislature passed the Controlled Substances Therapeutic Research Act, which allowed for the use of medical marijuana under research controls. It was later renamed the Lynn Pierson Therapeutic Research Program after a cancer patient who led the crusade for medical marijuana in New Mexico. Pierson was admitted to the program, but died before it was started. The program ran through the early 1980s with more than 250 patients statewide. In 1991, the federal government shut down the program it had in place to supply marijuana to research programs like the one in New Mexico. Today, according to numerous sources, only eight people in the United States receive medical marijuana from the government. So while numerous states have laws allowing for its use under medicinal purposes, there is no legal way to acquire it under federal law. In fact, just last week a federal judge sentenced a 52-year-old California man to 27 months in prison who had received a prescription for medical marijuana under the state's 1996 "Compassionate Use Act," and consequently had grown marijuana for his own and other patients' use.
Despite the ongoing conflict between state laws allowing medical marijuana use and federal laws prohibiting possession, cultivation and distribution, New Mexicans for Compassionate Use plans to file a lawsuit against the state requiring it to re-establish whatever is necessary to reactivate the medical marijuana program. The lawsuit also will address the right to use marijuana as part of a cultural or religious tradition in New Mexico, since marijuana was used in ceremonies and for various salves and medicines by Hispanic and Native American communities long before the drug became part of the popular culture.
Bryan Krumm is the president of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use, and a nurse who has used marijuana for his own pain after extensive knee surgery. He would be a candidate for New Mexico's program if it is ever re-established. He's been working without much success, to push legislation that would allow sick people to cultivate their own marijuana for medicinal use, and that would encourage the state Department of Health to set up a distribution system, thus alleviating the dependence on the federal government. His group also will be part of the federal lawsuit McCall plans to file. "We were talking about doing these suits prior to Gary Johnson's coming out," he said. "We're frustrated at this point. I certainly think there need to be regulations in place to prevent its distribution to children. I don't think you should be able to advertise it, but I don't think you should be able to advertise alcohol or tobacco. For medical use with children, there would need to be age limitations and parental consent. So far none of the state initiatives have really set up a good structure or a good model. They tend to grossly underestimate the needs of a medical patient."
4. "Gateway" Drug?
Will smoking marijuana turn you into a heroin addict? Depends on whom you talk to. At the end of July, Archbishop Michael Sheehan spoke out against drug addiction. In attendance at that meeting was the director of the New Mexico School Mental Health Initiative, who displayed a chart showing that use of marijuana leads to other drug abuse. This theory is called the "gateway theory,"-and is a leading reason some drug-addiction specialists fear any law that would condone using marijuana.
Example: the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse writes, "Children who have used marijuana ***image7***are 85 times likelier to use cocaine than children who have not used marijuana." In a 1996 Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing, U.S Sen. Orrin Hatch proclaimed, "Since marijuana use, harmful as it is in its own right, is often a prelude to the use of other drugs... [it is] doubly disastrous."
In fact, the only real connection is that because marijuana is the most popular illegal substance in the country, chances are the folks who use the less-popular ones-the "hard" ones-also have smoked weed. As Kevin Aplin, president of the Florida Cannabis Action Network, observes, "Everybody who smokes pot probably drank milk, too."
Ironically, marijuana isn't the first drug that abusers of cocaine and heroin try. They tend to start with alcohol and tobacco-both of which are legal and physically addictive, unlike pot. As far back as 1972, the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded that, yeah, marijuana isn't exactly good for you-unless it's prescribed for medical use-but its hazards have been grossly exaggerated.
So what are the real dangers? Because prohibition renders the regulation (i.e., quality control) of marijuana impossible, that which is available through criminal means sometimes is contaminated with harmful substances: pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, molds or bacteria. Another health hazard is the necessity to crudely inhale hot smoke in order to get high. If marijuana were decriminalized, the legalization of paraphernalia-the pipes, bongs, hookahs and other accoutrements you kept in your sock drawer in college-likely would lead to the development and availability of safer, more sophisticated smoking tools that would mitigate the harm on the lungs that comes from smoking anything. Currently, devices like vaporizers, which use steam to isolate the THC in the plant, are capable of cooling and filtering the smoke. These items are illegal and unavailable to the public.
5. Hypocrisy by Any Other Name
Deadly weapons, alcohol and tobacco-all highly dangerous and linked with the decline of health and public safety-are widely available in every city and town in the country. Yet marijuana, which never has been proven to endanger health, promote violent behavior or directly cause death, is a controlled substance that has kept more than 37,000 U.S. citizens in prison or jail as you read this.
Why is pot illegal? Seventy million Americans admit that they've tried it, including growing numbers of politicians such as Bill Clinton, AI Gore, Newt Gingrich and Clarence Thomas, to name a few. Of the 70 million who have experimented, more than 18 million say they've toked within the last year. Ten million of those confess to being regular marijuana smokers.
That's a lot of bong hits. And most likely, those numbers are on the low side: who knows how many people inhale, but don't want to admit it for fear of being busted (after all, doesn't pot make you paranoid)? But these kinds of numbers aren't reflected in Washington, D.C., where the federal government continues to wage the War on Pot. "We ***image8***just don't have the same impact as some of the other lobbies," says Chuck Thomas, the director of communications for Marijuana Policy Project, a D.C.-based reform lobby. "Look at the NRA. They've got three million members and a $100 million budget," he continues. "We've got four thousand members and a $100,000 budget." The legality of handguns, alcohol and tobacco presents a moral hypocrisy, but "the reason it exists is due to political issues," he says.
Thomas points to the alcohol prohibition of the earlier part of the century as an indication that making marijuana illegal doesn't help anything. "Alcohol prohibition ended through a well-funded movement," he points out. Because alcohol was made illegal for only 14 years, "people were able to notice first hand the increase in crime and related problems once alcohol was made illegal. They remembered how things were before [prohibition], and knew that outlawing alcohol only made things worse." Now, however, "we're in a strange position. We don't have a time when marijuana was legal that we can compare to our current situation." More and more, though, people are ready to discuss new solutions, and Thomas says that activism-whether grassroots petitioning or monetary-is the key to reforming marijuana laws.
Billions of dollars have been spent, the prison population of pot smokers has grown to near absurd proportion, and there has been virtually no decline in the number of adults who smoke marijuana. The war on drugs has been a failure, Governor Johnson said last month. You won't get an argument here.
Pot by Any Other Name
By Sarah Meadows
The familiar bushy greenery that is marijuana-immediately recognized by its now-iconic five-pronged leaf that's emblazoned on notebooks, T-shirts, backpacks and stickers on campuses across the nation-isn't the only member of the cannabis family. Its benign brother is hemp, a tough, fibrous and stalky plant that grows up rather than out, and that's better for paper than it is for pulling tubes.
With so much talk of legalizing pot for medical-and recreational-purposes, the debate over whether or not to legalize industrial hemp seemingly has fallen by the wayside. But actually this issue has made some progress. "[The hemp issue] is coming along," said Nicholas Lewels, who spends his days surrounded by products of this miracle plant He works at Santa Fe Hemp Company (125 E. Water St, 984-2599, www.santafehemp.com), a local store that takes advantage of the legality of imported raw hemp. Although it is illegal to grow hemp in New Mexico, selling products made from imported hemp is allowed under national import/export regulations.
Selling beautiful clothing, hats, paper products, wallets made from recycled goods and natural body care products, the store is an environmentally sustainable boutique, not the stoner-haven headshop that hemp's detractors would like you to believe it is.
With hemp products gaining a respectable place in the world of fashion, what's happening in the political arena? Quite a lot; in April, North Dakota became the first state to legalize growing industrial hemp, and Hawaii is pushing to allow it. Eleven states have received funding to research the growth and use of hemp, including New Mexico State University, thanks to the efforts of state Rep. Pauline Gubbels, (R) Bernalillo. Gubbels introduced a bill to legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp as an agricultural boost in southern New Mexico. Governor Johnson responded by allocating $50,000 in research funds at NMSU.
Why so much excitement? Because hemp is one of the most versatile-and renewable-plants in the world. It can be made into (and this is an abbreviated list), paper, plywood, rope, asbestos-free insulation, clothing, food, oil, carpeting, jewelry, beer, soap, balm, shampoo, lotion, food and beer. Hemp products can be turned into a sulfur and lead-free, relatively clean-burning diesel fuel ("a very dank fuel," according to Lewels) that does not contribute to the greenhouse effect. Really, the only thing hemp won't do is get you high, the plants grown for industrial purposes contain only trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive chemical found in regular ol' pot.
[This cover story was originally published in the August 11–17, 1999 issue of SFR.]
