From the Archives: Ken Cuccinelli clarifies remarks on marijuana legalization as federalism issue

Ken Cuccinelli clarifies remarks on marijuana legalization as federalism issue
February 9, 2013 1:16 PM MST

Replying to a question from a self-described former addict about marijuana legalization, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli used the opportunity to explain his views on federalism to an audience of Republican activists in Albemarle County on February 9.

Cuccinelli, a candidate for governor in 2013 and author of a new book scheduled to be published on February 12, The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty (Crown Forum, 272 pages, $25), said that “one of the problems with the ever-layering on of federal regulations and commands about how we all run our governments, our local governments, our businesses, is this sort of maniacal drive that we all be the same.”

Diversity, Cuccinelli explained, “is a strength of this country. We shouldn't try to wring it out, including intellectual diversity and policy diversity, because we get these sorts of experiments and some of them don't work and some of them may work.”

Colorado and Washington
Earlier in the week, the Attorney General had told students at the University of Virginia that, with regard to the legalization of recreational use of marijuana by voters in Colorado and Washington state, “I and a lot of people are watching Colorado and Washington to see how it plays out.”

Cuccinelli used his appearance at the Albemarle GOP breakfast to clarify and expand on his remarks at UVA.

“What I expressed to [the students] was an openness to observe how things work there, both in terms of the drug side and the economics. One issue that is often discussed is how the war on drugs itself has played out. Have we done this the right way? It's been phenomenally expensive.”

If the government, he said, is “going to put people in jail and spend $25,000 [to] $30,000 a year for a prison bed, do we want it to be for someone who's pushing marijuana or pushing meth? I'll tell you what, that $30,000 for the meth pusher is well worth the deal.”

Different kinds of illicit drugs, he said, are “not the same” and policymakers have to set priorities in terms of law and of how the laws are enforced.

“We have limits on our budget and our ability to police this, so we've got to make these kinds of distinctions over time.”

'Simple federalism experiment'

The benefit of the legalization of cannabis in Colorado and Washington, he explained, is that “having data from a couple of states, whole states, that go down this path may not be good news but it will be interesting and it will be something we can learn from.”

The situation in those two Western states “is going to be interesting on several levels,” he said, including “as a simple federalism experiment.”

What, he asked, is “the federal government going to do? What are they going to do? How is this interaction between the states and federal government going to take place?”

Cuccinelli said he has no “problem watching that. It's a peculiar subject but I do think it's important that states try some things they think are appropriate and whether the federal government approves or not, the rest of us watch and learn.”

Undermining federalism
He explained he had told the UVA students, “I'm ready to watch and learn. I'm not ready to do it [legalize marijuana] but I don't want to just never ever say never to the possibility in the future.”

When the federal government forces all states to be uniform, he said, diversity and experimentation are undermined.

“We're not going to have any [experiments] if the federal government is just squashing all of us,” Cuccinelli said, adding: “That's something I have fought against as AG.”

At the same time, he continued, “I don't want you to think that I'm going to land in the governor's office and sign a legalization bill. I don't think you have to worry about it getting to the governor's desk but it's worth knowing what your candidate's saying.”


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on February 9, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Guest Post: These Special Interests Oppose Marijuana Law Reform

Americans overwhelmingly agree that marijuana should be legal, so why isn't it? So glad you asked...

by Laura Williams

In this era of political polarization, when Americans seem to agree on absolutely nothing, let me reassure you. We overwhelmingly agree that cannabis should be legal.

1 in 5 Americans have (state) legal access, 1 in 2 have experimented with it, and more than 1 in 10 smoke regularly. Southern California yuppies are publicly winning prizes for growing the same plant that landed Georgia teenagers in prison.

Half of states allow at least limited use, and a few attract elite cannabis tourism . Federally, the drug remains fiercely criminalized, despite irrefutable evidence of its medical value.

So what’s the hold-up?

Being in the anti-marijuana business is astonishingly lucrative for bureaucrats and campaign donors. Here are just a few of the heavy hitters addicted to federal prohibition:

Big Booze:
National Beer Wholesalers Association
Anheuser-Busch InBev
Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America

The makers and distributors of America’s top-selling beers, wines, and liquors are already facing stiff competition from newly deregulated microbrewers and craft distilleries.

Cannabis prohibition shuts out a zero-calorie competitor with far fewer short- and long-term health risks. The industry donated (read: invested) $19 million to re-election campaigns in 2016, and another $4 million to soft money groups like “Public Safety First” which specifically oppose cannabis legalization efforts.

Cannabis legalization does reduce alcohol sales, and its regular use reduces alcoholism and alcohol-related deaths. Each year 37,000 deaths in the US are attributed to alcohol, compared to zero deaths from cannabis use, ever. Brewers and distillers are eager to point “public health and safety” attention in another direction.

The Boys in Blue:
National Fraternal Order of Police
National Association of Police Organizations
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees

Local law enforcement has become highly dependent on federal and state money devoted to the War on Drugs. Civil asset forfeiture – a legacy of the 1984 drug war omnibus crime bill – allows local police departments to keep 80 percent of property seized in suspected (not proven) drug activity. Local cops regularly auction off homes and cars connected with small marijuana sales, pocketing the proceeds without convicting anyone of any crime. Drug raids “were no longer just about putting on a good show and terrorizing the counterculture. Now the raids could generate revenue for all of the police agencies involved.” (Randy Balko, Rise Of The Warrior Cop).

Property stolen from innocent Americans (the Washington Post found 80 percent of victims of asset forfeiture were never even charged) has paid for military-grade equipment and SWAT teams used in still-more-terrifying drug raids for profit.

National Fraternal Order of Police, National Association of Police Organizations, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, and literally dozens of smaller interest groups and political action committees represent the interests of law enforcement officers. Drug testing laboratories, prosecutors, drug court lawyers and judges, rehab centers, counselors, and other unionized social services also depend on marijuana arrests to keep numbers up.

For them, the nation’s outdated marijuana policy means guaranteed revenue, low-risk, peaceful “offenders” to fill arrest quotas, and easy excuses to search or detain citizens.

Big Brother: The Prison Industrial Complex
Association Of Administrative Law Judges
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
GEO Group, Inc.
CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America)

Private prison companies and state institutions alike lobby for longer mandatory sentences; stricter enforcement; younger, healthier, and less violent prisoners. Corrections jobs are a major source of rural employment.

Prisons contract for an occupancy rate, charging taxpayers for unmet quotas. More Americans are arrested for marijuana annually than for all violent crimes combined. More Americans are in prison than ever before, and since 1985 at least half the increase is drug offenders alone.

Increasingly, lobbyists for drug testing centers and addiction treatment providers have sought to have marijuana dependence (for which there is limited medical evidence) perceived – and insured – as a medical condition. Compulsory and court-ordered treatment for this “addiction” is a reliable source of revenue for unscrupulous operators.

What violent crime remains is largely a product of drugs prohibition. Cash-oriented transactions between known lawbreakers (drug deals) don’t make for peaceful business practices.

All smuggled goods and illegal sales share the same vulnerability to violence. Now, Budweiser and Coors might sue to resolve a contract dispute; in 1929, criminal rum runners settled scores with Molotov cocktails and Tommy guns. Violent deaths of police officers peaked during prohibition and fell rapidly after its repeal; the number of officers wouldn’t approach that level again until the year Nixon declared the War on Drugs.

The violence of black markets still unnecessarily mars American neighborhoods, and unprecedented mass incarceration plagues the conscience of the Land of the Free.

Big Pharma:
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)
Pfizer Inc
Eli Lilly & Co
Express Scripts
Merck & Co
AstraZeneca PLC

Pharmaceutical industry products are expensive, and many have life-altering side effects. Cannabis can be grown by the patient and has far fewer and less severe side effects.

Before President Ford shut down cannabis research at universities, scientists had noticed cannabis’s effectiveness in reducing seizures, relieving pain, even shrinking tumors. Specialized strains are bred to treat depression, anxiety, nausea, Parkinson’s, and dozens of other common conditions for which patients currently take patented pills.

Despite continued denials by the federal government that marijuana has any accepted medical uses, the government’s own researchers have patented a synthetic cannabinoid called Marinol. Patent No. 6,630,507 credits “The United States of America as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services” and lists federal researcher as “inventors” of “cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants.” The patent reads “cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia.” A dozen other derived chemicals are in development to treat nerve pain, memory loss, traumatic brain injury, arthritis, hypertension, and obesity.

Since this patent was granted in 1999, The Drug Enforcement Administration has twice renewed its stance that cannabis has “no currently accepted medical use.”

Big Government:
American Federation of Government Employees
National Active & Retired Federal Employees Assn
American Federation of Government Employees

Marijuana prohibition is a $20 Billion annual federal jobs project. Departments and agencies will not give up power or budgets voluntarily. The DEA seized $27 Billion in assets in 2014 through its cannabis enforcement program, in excess of its $3 Billion annual budget. 10,000 DEA employees, 63,000 Federal Prison System employees, border guards, and thousands more “interagency” positions funded by the expansive, failed War on Drugs don’t want to see their budget downsized or authority curtailed.

Similarly, the CIA, NSA, State Department, and Department of Defense also rely heavily on public acceptance of the War on Drugs as a pretense for overriding national sovereignty< around the world. In their bullying of Latin American leaders and control of opiate fields in the Levant, drug suppression money is often both carrot and stick.

Liberty vs. Lobbyists
Doing battle against big government and corporate cronies like the criminals above is more satisfying than punching Nazis and more practical than protesting. The American people are fed up with prohibition and the failed War on Drugs.

Ending prohibition has something for everyone:

• Cut the budget deficit
• Prevent opiate overdoses
• Restore respect for the Bill of Rights
• Reduce police violence against minorities
• Attack income inequality
• Improve public health
• Lower unemployment
• Reduce illegal immigration
• Improve survival and reduce violence in developing countries
• Position the US as a leader of human policy abroad

What can possibly unite an impossibly divided America? A serious push to end prohibition.



Dr. Laura Williams teaches communication strategy to undergraduates and executives. She is a passionate advocate for critical thinking, individual liberties, and the Oxford Comma.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Guest Post: How an Axe Murderer Helped Make Weed Illegal

by Laura Smith

Tampa police arrived at the Licata residence one afternoon in October 1933. Neighbors in the tightly-knit immigrant community were concerned. No one had come in or out of the Italian-American family’s home all day, which was strange, considering the school-aged children, and that the father, Mike, ran two bustling barber shops.

When the police opened the door, they found carnage. Twenty-one year-old Victor Licata had murdered his family with an axe the night before – his parents, one of his brothers, and his younger sister were all dead and another younger brother would be soon. Victor was discovered in the bathroom, curled in a chair, murmuring incomprehensibly. His family was trying to dismember him, he said, and replace his arms with wooden ones.

According to Larry Slomans’s book, Reefer Madness, shortly after the murders, Licata was evaluated by psychiatrists and determined to be suffering from “dementia praecox,” (now known as schizophrenia). The doctors speculated that his condition was congenital. Two cousins and a great uncle had been committed to asylums, his brother also suffered from “dementia praecox,” and his parents were first cousins. The police had been trying to have him committed for over a year, but stopped when his parents said they would care for him at home.

The case would have slipped largely unnoticed into grisly small-town lore if it were not for one detail. According to the local newspaper, at the time that he committed the murders, Victor Licata had been “addicted to smoking marihuana cigarettes for more than six months.”

Driven By Racism
Four years later when Harry Anslinger heard about the Licata case, he knew it was the break he had been waiting for. Anslinger had recently been appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (the precursor to the DEA) after making his name as a temperance hardliner during prohibition. But as Johann Hari explains in his book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, after prohibition ended, bureaus like Anslinger’s were threatened by obsolescence.

Anslinger’s office was focused on narcotics like cocaine and heroin, but these drugs were only used by a small minority. In order to ensure a robust future for his bureau, “he needed more,” Hari writes. Marijuana was used more widely.

Anslinger consulted 30 doctors about the drug’s connection to violence. All except one told him there was none, so he bucked the other 29 and trumpeted the findings of that one doctor. Anslinger warned in a congressional hearing, “Some people will fly into a delirious rage, and they are temporarily irresponsible and may commit violent crimes.”

His anti-marijuana push was driven by racism. “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men,” he was quoted as saying, and “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

Beginning in 1939, immediately following her performance of “Strange Fruit,” Anslinger began ruthlessly targeting Billie Holiday who was rumored to have a heroin addiction. Those closest to her believed Anslinger’s campaign created an enormous strain, contributing to her early death. During this time, anti-drug crusaders switched from calling it “cannabis” to “marihuana” or “marijuana,” hoping the Spanish word would capitalize on anti-Mexican sentiment.

Linking Violence to Cannabis
At hearings in 1937 on a bill to prohibit marijuana, Anslinger was asked for “horror stories” proving the marijuana-violence connection. Two weeks later, a letter from the chief inspector at the Florida Board of Health arrived telling the story of Victor Licata. The inspector also sent along a picture, presumably the young man’s mugshot, which had been circulated widely in the Florida dailies. In the photograph, Licata is crazed violence incarnate, his wild-eyed stare entirely unnerving. This would be the face of Anslinger’s marijuana crackdown.

Victor Licata, driven “mad” by reefer.

Anslinger began giving speeches and writing articles on the dangers of marijuana, harping on the Licata case. “You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother,” he said. In his most famous article, “Marijuana – Assassin of Youth” published in the American magazine, Licata is transformed from a congenitally mentally ill person into “a sane and rather quiet young man” whose reefer-toking had turned him into an axe-wielding murderer – not his schizophrenia.

Anslinger succeeded in turning marijuana into a national issue. By 1938, the film Reefer Madness had been purchased by a new director and was being circulated more widely, warning of the “frightful toll of a new drug menace which is destroying the youth of America … The Real Public Enemy Number One!”

In the 1930s, The New York Times ran dozens of articles about police crackdowns on “marijuana rings,” whereas in 1926, the paper ran an article titled, “Marijuana Smoking Is Reported Safe.”

The Marijuana Tax Act, legislation that Anslinger drafted himself, was passed in 1937, effectively making the sale and possession of marijuana illegal across the country. In 1950, Victor Licata hanged himself with a bed sheet. Meanwhile, Anslinger’s bureau flourished.

According to Hari, “within thirty years, he succeeded in turning this crumbling department with these disheartened men into the headquarters for a global war that would continue for decades.” In the coming years, hundreds of thousands of men and women – disproportionately people of color – would spend huge portions of their lives behind bars.

Reprinted from Timeline.

Laura Smith is a staff writer @timeline and a freelance journalist based in Oakland, California. Her nonfiction book, The Art of Vanishing, about the disappearance of Barbara Newhall Follett will be out from Viking in 2018.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Guest Post: Ella Fitzgerald's flirtation with reefer songs

Adam Gustafson, Pennsylvania State University

“The First Lady of Song” Ella Fitzgerald would have turned 100 on April 25: institutions from the Library of Congress to the Grammy Museum will be honoring her amazing contributions to the jazz canon.

It will be interesting to see if any tributes mention Fitzgerald’s “Wacky Dust,” her song about cocaine.

Nick Lehr/The Conversation via Wikimedia Commons

In the 1930s – just as Fitzgerald was getting her start – jazz was under fire for its purported ties to drug culture. The 1936 anti-drug film “Reefer Madness” featured party scenes of young people listening to jazz and ragtime while smoking marijuana. A year later, Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, published “Marijuana, Assassin of Youth,” which pinned the use of drugs on a culture of unscrupulous partying – with big band jazz as its soundtrack.

In this climate, an ascendant singer named Ella Fitzgerald sought to take the opposite tack and cultivated a reputation as the “girl next door.” Fitzgerald walked the fine line between being understood as a jazz artist and an entertainer. Two recordings from the beginning of her career signal this tension. “A-Tisket, a-Tasket” and “Wacky Dust” were both released in 1938. One tune would go on to become a signature hit. The other would be largely forgotten, a side note to an otherwise squeaky-clean career.

A dressed-up nursery rhyme?

By 1938, Fitzgerald had established herself as the primary vocalist for Chick Webb’s orchestra at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. Under Webb, Fitzgerald began recording for Decca Records and in May 1938, Decca released Fitzgerald’s first major hit, “A-Tisket, a-Tasket.”

It was a song that perfectly encapsulates Fitzgerald’s girl-next-door image. It opens with Webb leading the orchestra through a stock series of simple chord changes. When Fitzgerald enters, listeners are treated to a reworked nursery rhyme that asks little of them other than to sit back and enjoy. There is no moral value, no hint of the singer’s inner life and no mention of drug use.

Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘A-Tisket, a-Tasket.’

In fact, “A-Tisket, a-Tasket” is barely jazz. As with Goodman and so many other bandleaders in the late 1930s, Webb and Fitzgerald seem more interested in creating a pop tune that fit the 78 RPM format than in staying true to their genre. Yet it became so popular that she and Webb recorded a follow-up track, “I Found My Yellow Basket,” that same year.

But then – just a few months after “A-Tisket, a-Tasket” – Webb and Fitzgerald recorded “Wacky Dust,” a song about the allure and dangers of cocaine use.

Ella’s reefer song

How Fitzgerald moved from a nursery rhyme to a song about cocaine says more about jazz culture than it does Fitzgerald’s own tastes. And while songs about drugs were common in jazz, “Wacky Dust” put Fitzgerald in the awkward position of recording a song that ran contrary to the image that she was trying to cultivate.

Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Wacky Dust.’

The release of “Wacky Dust” coincided with a massive shift in cultural opinion taking place in the U.S. about the use of drugs like cocaine and marijuana. Once a relatively uncontroversial social issue, drug use in the 1930s increasingly came to be seen as a societal ill that was especially (and incorrectly) tied to African-Americans and jazz musicians. Even sympathetic artists couldn’t help but buy into the stereotype. George Gershwin’s operatic adaptation of DuBose Heyward’s novel “Porgy,” for example, was revolutionary for its diverse cast, but the story, written and adapted by two men of European descent, reinforced the popular perception of prevalent drug use among African-Americans.

Jazz artists in the early 1930s didn’t do much to help this view. Just as big band jazz was coming to dominate the music scene, two of the era’s biggest names released songs with direct references to drug use.

In 1933, Cab Calloway’s “Reefer Man” was used in the film “International House.” A year later, Benny Goodman released “Texas Tea Party,” a reference to both marijuana and to the trombonist on the recording, Jack Teagarden. These were not subtle works, and most jazz artists of the era produced what have since become known as “reefer songs.” Even Louis Armstrong – who, like Fitzgerald, cultivated a rather benign image – was arrested for smoking marijuana and recorded several tunes that allude to drug use.

So when “Wacky Dust” was released, the idea of one of the great New York City house bands recording a jazz tune about drugs wasn’t all that surprising. (Fitzgerald and Webb had experimented with a similar subject a couple of years earlier with the release of “When I Get Low I Get High.”)

Like “A-Tisket, a-Tasket,” Wacky Dust opens with Webb’s orchestra. Fitzgerald doesn’t enter until nearly one-third of the way through the song. The first verse aligns cocaine with jazz and describes how easy it is for musicians to access the drug. The second verse and bridge section describe its wonders, but the final verse takes a turn, with Fitzgerald warning that the drug can’t be trusted and might kill you.

While “A-Tisket, a-Tasket” went on to become one of Fitzgerald’s signature pieces, “Wacky Dust” has faded into relative obscurity outside of specialty albums that feature songs about drug culture. And this makes sense. Fitzgerald was extremely careful about her image, and “Wacky Dust” didn’t fit. In fact, after “Wacky Dust,” Fitzgerald moved entirely away from songs that alluded to drugs.

By the 1950s, she had embarked on a recording career that displayed an unrivaled musicianship and joy for singing. Nonetheless, one has to wonder what her career would have looked like had “Wacky Dust” been the hit of 1938, rather than “A-Tisket, a-Tasket.”

Adam Gustafson, Instructor in Music, Pennsylvania State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

From the Archives: Justin Bieber, Gary Becker, and the future of marijuana prohibition

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on January 7, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Justin Bieber, Gary Becker, and the future of marijuana prohibition

What do teen heartthrob Justin Bieber and a Nobel prize-winning economist have in common?

It turns out that both, in their own way, have made a strong argument in favor of ending the War on Drugs.

Bieber, the Canadian singer and actor, was allegedly caught on film smoking a blunt (marijuana in a cigar wrapper), as reported by celebrity gossip site TMZ. The incident occurred not long after Bieber was involved in a traumatic accident that resulted in the death of a paparazzo trying to photograph the teen idol in his white Ferrari on a Los Angeles street.

Soon after the photographs surfaced, Bieber tweeted to his fans: “everyday growing and learning. trying to be better. u get knocked down, u get up” – not an apology but a subtle acknowledgment that the allegations may have substance.

Losing the war

The same day that TMZ published the Bieber photos, Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker published an article in the Wall Street Journal asking, “Have We Lost the War on Drugs?”

Becker and his co-author, University of Chicago economist Kevin Murphy, point out that the “paradox of the war on drugs is that the harder governments push the fight, the higher drug prices become to compensate for the greater risks. That leads to larger profits for traffickers who avoid being punished. This is why larger drug gangs often benefit from a tougher war on drugs, especially if the war mainly targets small-fry dealers and not the major drug gangs. Moreover, to the extent that a more aggressive war on drugs leads dealers to respond with higher levels of violence and corruption, an increase in enforcement can exacerbate the costs imposed on society.”

Becker and Murphy argue for, at the very least, decriminalizing now-illegal drugs, as Colorado and Washington state voters did with regard to marijuana in last November's election.

“Decriminalization of all drugs by the U.S. would be a major positive step away from the war on drugs,” the economists said in the Wall Street Journal.

“In recent years, states have begun to decriminalize marijuana, one of the least addictive and less damaging drugs. Marijuana is now decriminalized in some form in about 20 states, and it is de facto decriminalized in some others as well. If decriminalization of marijuana proves successful, the next step would be to decriminalize other drugs, perhaps starting with amphetamines. Gradually, this might lead to the full decriminalization of all drugs.”

Saving money, raising revenue

Becker and Murphy are not the first notable economists to argue for an end to the drug war on the grounds that it is economically indefensible.

In 2005, a statement signed by 500 economists, including Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and several from Virginia's George Mason University, argued that ending marijuana prohibition “would save $7.7 billion per year in state and federal expenditures on prohibition enforcement and produce tax revenues of at least $2.4 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like most consumer goods. If, however, marijuana were taxed similarly to alcohol or tobacco, it might generate as much as $6.2 billion annually.”

The absence of a public outcry over Justin Bieber's alleged pot smoking, along with the Colorado and Washington initiatives and the adoption of laws permitting the medicinal use of marijuana in 18 states, suggest that the American people are more open to a rational discussion about ending the drug war. Bieber's non-apology on Twitter itself suggests that he views the incident as uncontroversial and unworthy of further attention.

While Gary Becker and other economists make erudite and logically rigorous arguments against drug prohibition, Bieber's near-silence is eloquent in its own way and equally compelling.

Politicians do not seem to be following expert opinion or public sentiment, however. While two years ago, then-Delegate Harvey Morgan (R-Gloucester) introduced legislation with the effect of decriminalizing marijuana possession, this year the emphasis in the Virginia General Assembly seems to be toward extending the reach of drug laws. Delegate Bill Carrico (R-Grayson County), for instance, has submitted a bill that would require welfare recipients to be tested for cannabis and other drugs. Nobody in Richmond seems to have taken on Delegate Morgan's mantle in the wake of his retirement.

Eventually, as Becker and similar thinkers point out, the law will catch up to public opinion.

Guest Post: Report slams ‘unscientific’ war on drugs

By Tania Rabesandratana

Global policies to control illegal drug use tend to ignore scientific evidence and can undermine development efforts, global experts warn.

Repressive policies meant to protect people from the damage caused by drugs have caused disease, deadly violence and discrimination, says the Johns Hopkins-Lancet Commission on Drug Policy and Health, drawing on decades of research.

They say that efforts to clamp down on drug use have helped spread HIV and other infectious diseases, as users are forced to take drugs in secret and struggle to access sterile equipment such as syringe needles.

The report also highlights a spike of homicides in countries where governments use military forces against drug traffickers, which, in turn, causes drug gangs to arm themselves.

“Alternative development programmes really haven’t addressed the underlying factors that lead people to cultivate drugs.”

Rebecca Schleifer, Yale University

Ahead of a special UN meeting on the subject in New York, United States, on 19-21 April, the commission urges governments to focus on reducing harm from drug use rather than on punishment.

“The war on drugs and zero-tolerance policies that grew out of the prohibitionist consensus are now being challenged on multiple fronts, including their health, human rights and development impact,” the researchers explain in a paper published in medical journal The Lancet on 2 April.

The report highlights “aggressive and harmful practices” against farmers who grow drug crops such as coca, cannabis and opium poppies. This includes the forcible destruction of coca fields in the Andes through large-scale herbicide spraying, which causes health problems and environmental damage among affected communities and can force farmers to abandon their land.

Meanwhile, “alternative development” programmes to encourage farmers to switch to other crops have largely failed through poor design, says an appendix to the report.

“Alternative development programmes really haven’t addressed the underlying factors that lead people to cultivate drugs,” says Rebecca Schleifer, who studies drugs and human rights issues and is a fellow at Yale University in the United States. For example, she says, some programmes require farmers to destroy their crops before they can get aid.

“But if you do that before alternatives [are in place] you just undermine these farmers’ livelihoods,” Schleifer says.

The Lancet paper argues that minor, non-violent drug offences should be decriminalised. It recommends focusing on harm reduction services, such as providing supervised injection sites and prescribing replacement drugs for those addicted to opioids such as heroin, instead of aggressive drug policing.

The authors also endorse a gradual move towards regulated legal drug markets — as Uruguay has done with cannabis, for example — and for this change to be assessed scientifically.

In addition, they “call to broaden the research agenda around drug use [beyond] brain pathology” to include economic and social science, says commission co-chair Adeeba Kamarulzaman, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Malaya in Malaysia.

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On a practical level, the indicators used to evaluate drug policies should change, the paper suggests. “Success has been measured in hectares [of drug crops] eradicated, in kilos [seized], numbers of people arrested, convicted, incarcerated,” Schleifer explains. “These don’t really measure anything apart from scale of effort.”

The paper references the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and related promises for governments “to rely on the best scientific evidence” as they seek to ensure the “wellbeing of all people”.

But drug policy discussions are still far from adopting the language of SDGs, says Kamarulzaman. “Most countries are still stuck on criminalisation and zero tolerance,” she says.

Schleifer is more optimistic. While drug control policies and development efforts used to be completely separate, links between the two have been increasing in recent years, she says.

The same people who adopted the SDGs last September are returning later this month for the high-level UN meeting on drugs, she says. “It’s a tough road ahead, but even controversial subjects such as decriminalisation are on the table.”

References

Joanne Csete and others Public health and international drug policy (The Lancet, 2 April 2016)


This article was originally published on SciDev.Net. Read the original article.

It's 4/20: Time for a Marijuana News Round-up

Easter falls on 4/20 this year, which means in addition to bunnies and chocolate eggs, Americans are thinking about marijuana.

Here's a brief round-up of marijuana-related news in celebration of the dual holiday.

First, where did the "420" tradition come from?

An Phung offers this explanation on the NBC Los Angeles web site:

While there are no shortages of theories about how the “high" holiday came to be, several published reports give the credit for 4/20's creation to a group of Northern California high school students. The friends say they started using the term as code for pot-smoking in 1971, after planning to meet at 4:20 p.m. one day to smoke and search out a rumored pot crop.

The term spread, eventually reaching, through mutual acquaintances, members of the Greatful Dead [sic] rock band, the friends claim. The lingo was picked up by High Times magazine in 1990, according to BBC News, after an editor saw the term on a Grateful Dead concert flyer.

While others have also come forward to claim they are parents of the pot phrase, the friends, who call themselves the Waldos, say they have letters and other documents to back their story.

What about the weed business?

While he cautions that too much optimism may be premature, Andrew Bender reports in Forbes that Colorado is seeing a boom in the tourist industry since recreational pot was legalized earlier this year:

In the first quarter of the year, Denver International Airport saw record traffic, online searches for Denver hotels were up 25 percent, the real estate market has boomed, and the nation’s first cannabis-themed tour operator has sold out all its tours. That’s a lot to cheer about going into the 420 Rally this weekend, itself newly expanded and set to bring in record numbers of visitors.

Bender offers details such as this:

Cannabis tour operator My 420 Tours has sold out all six of its tours so far this year, at rates of $1,399 to $1,699 for 5 days. CEO and founder J. J. Walker says that the tours let visitors “see the industry from inside and out” with visits to dispensaries and growers, cannabis cooking classes, hashish-preparing lessons and plenty of product samples. Oh, yes, and snacks.

And this:

[Ricardo] Baca and [J.J.] Walker also credit pot with new real estate construction, sales and rentals. “There’s tons and tons of construction starting and apartments being built,” Walker says.

Baca has heard from apartment search services that there’s been a huge influx of people, especially those in their twenties, moving to the state for the marijuana. “They don’t want to have to be looking over their shoulder or for it to be illegal just to have some in their refrigerator.”

Meanwhile, Walker says, commercial rental rates for potential dispensaries or growers’ warehouses have skyrocketed.

“People are moving here for the industry and the opportunity and freedom it represents,” Walker says. Talk about all-American values.

Hunter Stuart offers these four statistics (and nine more equally compelling) at The Huffington Post:

$1.53 billion: The amount the national legal marijuana market is worth, according to a Nov. 2013 report from ArcView Market Research, a San Francisco-based investor group focused on the marijuana industry.

$10.2 billion: The estimated amount the national legal marijuana market will be worth in five years, according to that same ArcView report.

$6.17 million: The amount of tax revenue collected in Colorado on legal marijuana sales in just the first two months of 2014.

$98 million: The total tax revenue that Colorado could reap in the fiscal year that begins in July, according to a recent budget proposal from Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Another economic benefit of pot legalization is that it is usually accompanied by the legalization of industrial hemp production. According to a report in the Post Independent:

“Hemp can fix every problem in the world if we just let it, so let’s get to work finding out the hundreds of thousands of uses for hemp,” said Sen. David Balmer, R-Centennial.

In 2011, the U.S. imported $11.5 million worth of hemp products, largely from China and Canada, compared to $1.4 million in imports in 2000. Most of that was hemp seed and hemp oil, used in granola bars, soaps, lotions and cooking oil.

Colorado authorized hemp cultivation in 2012 when it legalized marijuana for recreational use. Farmers must apply for permits with the state Department of Agriculture, which are being issued for the first time this year, though a few growers didn’t wait and brought in sparse and scraggly experimental crops last year.

Twelve other states have removed barriers to hemp production — California, Kentucky, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia, according to the Vote Hemp advocacy group.

As for those who worry that legalizing marijuana (for medical or recreational purposes) will lead to an increase in violent crime, Erin Delmore of MSNBC reports:

[E]ven after Colorado legalized the sale of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use on Jan. 1 of this year, violent and property crime rates in the city are actually falling.

According to data from the Denver Police Department, violent crime (including homicide, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault) fell by 6.9% in the first quarter of 2014, compared with the same period in 2013. Property crime (including burglary, larceny, auto theft, theft from motor vehicle and arson) dropped by 11.1%.

Delmore cites a study, "The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on Crime: Evidence from State Panel Data, 1990-2006," by four criminologists at the University of Texas at Dallas ( Robert G. Morris, Michael TenEyck, J. C. Barnes, and Tomislav V. Kovandzic), which concludes (references omitted):

The central finding gleaned from the present study was that MML [medical marijuana legalization] is not predictive of higher crime rates and may be related to reductions in rates of homicide and assault. Interestingly, robbery and burglary rates were unaffected by medicinal marijuana legislation, which runs counter to the claim that dispensaries and grow houses lead to an increase in victimization due to the opportunity structures linked to the amount of drugs and cash that are present. Although, this is in line with prior research suggesting that medical marijuana dispensaries may actually reduce crime in the immediate vicinity.

In sum, these findings run counter to arguments suggesting the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes poses a danger to public health in terms of exposure to violent crime and property crimes. To be sure, medical marijuana laws were not found to have a crime exacerbating effect on any of the seven crime types. On the contrary, our findings indicated that MML precedes a reduction in homicide and assault. While it is important to remain cautious when interpreting these findings as evidence that MML reduces crime, these results do fall in line with recent evidence and they conform to the longstanding notion that marijuana legalization may lead to a reduction in alcohol use due to individuals substituting marijuana for alcohol. Given the relationship between alcohol and violent crime, it may turn out that substituting marijuana for alcohol leads to minor reductions in violent crimes that can be detected at the state level.

With these advantages -- reductions in crime, economic growth, increased tax revenues -- it should come as no surprise that Americans have become more open to the idea of marijuana legalization in recent years.

Writing in The Weed Blog earlier this month on a survey of Americans about pot laws, Paul Armentano of NORML reported:

Seventy-five percent of Americans believe that the sale and use of cannabis will eventually be legal for adults, according to national polling data released this week by the Pew Research Center. Pew pollsters have been surveying public opinion on the marijuana legalization issue since 1973, when only 12 percent of Americans supported regulating the substance.

Fifty-four percent of respondents say that marijuana ought to be legal now, according to the poll. The total is the highest percentage of support ever reported by Pew and marks an increase of 2 percent since 2013. Forty-two percent of respondents said that they opposed legalizing marijuana for non-therapeutic purposes. Only 16 percent of Americans said that the plant should not be legalized for any reason.

Pew reported its findings like this:

The survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Feb. 14-23 among 1,821 adults, finds that support for the legalization of marijuana use continues to increase. And fully 75% of the public –including majorities of those who favor and oppose the legal use of marijuana – think that the sale and use of marijuana will eventually be legal nationwide.

By wide margins, the public views marijuana as less harmful than alcohol, both to personal health and to society more generally. Moreover, just as most Americans prefer a less punitive approach to the use of drugs such as heroin and cocaine, an even larger majority (76% of the public) – including 69% of Republicans and 79% of Democrats – think that people convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana should not have to serve time in jail.

(The same survey also showed Americans' preference for medical treatment rather than criminal penalties for users of harder drugs like heroin and cocaine.)

However you slice it, the news is good for proponents of ending the drug war, at least as far as marijuana is concerned. People are beginning to understand that prohibition doesn't work, it is unable to overcome the economic laws of supply-and-demand, it encourages the growth of illegal enterprises, and it punishes -- sometimes with death -- otherwise innocent Americans.

Gary Johnson Speaks at CPAC 2010

Although he did not share the stage in the main ballroom with such conservative heavyweights as Glenn Beck, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, or Ryan Sorba, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson did take his turn at a microphone provided by the Campaign for Liberty, a youth-oriented outgrowth of Representative Ron Paul's bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

Widely rumored to be considering his own run for the White House in 2012, the two-term GOP governor from a Democratic-leaning state spoke for about 20 minutes on a range of topics including the need to decriminalize marijuana and other drugs, the net economic gain for New Mexico due to immigrants (even undocumented immigrants), and the necessity for fixing our broken political system in Washington.

In fact, those were his first words when he took to the podium, in front of a crowd of 175-200 CPAC attendees and other interested political activists:

Our politics have failed us in America.  Our leaders on both sides of the aisle are making things worse for us every year, not better.  And the proof is all around us.  Take a look at our America today, take a look at the brink of economic collapse that our government has led us to, and tell me that we're busy living the dream.  We're not.  We're busy getting deeper into debt.  We're busy losing the freedom that so many have given their lives to achieve.

Thomas Jefferson said that it was our patriotic duty to stage a revolution every generation just to kick out the riff-raff.  He was right.  He understood politicians and politics perfectly.  We do need a revolution in America in this generation, an armed rebellion.  Let's arm ourselves with common sense.  Let's stop spending money we don't have.  Let's live within our means.  This is our America.  How can we justify borrowing money for our retirement and health care and hand the bill to future generations?

Our country is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Let every Member of Congress and the President of the United States take an oath to take on these difficult spending issues that we face and vow that they're not going to be re-elected:  understand that they won't be re-elected.

Here's the video of part one:

About nine minutes after he began his remarks, Johnson stated:

Leadership on both sides of the aisle have to cut Medicare.

Look, we've made commitments to individuals who are on Social Security. I think it would be wrong to back away from those commitments, so ... this has to be a commitment that we keep.

But these entitlement programs for the rest of us, they have to be reviewed. Cuts need to be made because the very viability of this country is at stake.

Here is the video for part two of Johnson's speech:

Not backing away from one of his more controversial positions, about 18 minutes into his speech, Johnson said straightforwardly:

Let's deal from reality. I think marijuana should be legalized.

It's never, never going to be legal to smoke pot, become impaired, and get behind the wheel of a car. It's never going to be legal to smoke pot and do harm to others. It's never going to be legal to get kids to smoke pot.

Here is part three of Governor Johnson's speech, which ends with a question by Alex Knepper, who has been making a name for himself since CPAC. The recording ends abruptly because my camera's battery died at that point.

Gary Johnson is honorary chairman of the OUR America Initiative. More information can be found on that organization's web site.

Trivia tidbit:  If Gary Johnson is elected President, he will be the first person to do so and also to have climbed Mount Everest.

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Welcome Company

It took me until darkness fell to pick up a paper copy of today's Richmond Times-Dispatch, which is fairly easy to do in Charlottesville. (One of our election officials mentioned to me at training tonight that he had seen and liked my article.) Once I did purchase a copy, I discovered that my op-ed on federal hate-crime laws was placed in juxtaposition to some very good and well-known writers.

My article was positioned on the upper right-hand corner of the page and its two columns extend about two-thirds down along that page. Running parallel, to the left, is a George F. Will column about economic policy. Will's piece does not appear on the Times-Dispatch web site, but, as it was published in last Sunday's Washington Post (under a different headline, "The Real Jobs Threat" instead of "Stimulating Incumbency"), it can be found there.

There is also a Robert Arian editorial cartoon showing Barack Obama at his desk with a plaque that reads "THE BUCK DROPS HERE."

Underneath those two articles, across the bottom third of the page, is an article originally published in the The Wall Street Journal on October 12. Written by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the original headline was "George Shultz on the Drug War"; the Times-Dispatch headline was "George Shultz Weighs In on the Continuing Drug War."

Will writes:

Republicans are operatic when they pretend to take seriously, in order to wax indignant about, the Democrats' professed plan to partially pay for Sen. Max Baucus's version of reform by cutting at least $400 billion from Medicare. Supporters of the Baucus bill are guilty of many things but not, regarding such cuts, of sincerity. Congress regularly vows to make Medicare cuts, and as regularly defers them.

Today, Washington routinely speaks of trillions, as in: This year's trillion-dollar deficit. And the $9 trillion in projected deficits over 10 years. And the upwards of $1.8 trillion that Baucus's "$829 billion plan" would actually cost in the first 10 years (2014-23) in which its provisions would be fully operational. But the number from which Washington flinches is precisely 999,999,999,997 less than a trillion. It is: 3.

Many Democrats believe that rising unemployment means the nation needs a "second" stimulus -- but one they could call something other than a stimulus because it would be the third. The first was passed in February 2008, two months after the recession began. Its $168 billion tax rebate failed to stimulate because overleveraged Americans perversely saved much of it.

Admitting that the first stimulus existed would complicate the task of justifying a third one, given that the second one -- the $787 billion extravaganza that galloped through Congress in February -- has not been the success its advocates said it would be.

O'Grady wrote, with regard to the former Secretary of State's realization that the misguided war on drugs has been a failure:

Mr. Shultz recalls what happened shortly after he left government, when his view that interdiction is not the solution came up after a speech to a Stanford alumni group.

Then, as now, he believed that we need to look at the problem from an economic perspective and understand what happens when there is high demand for a prohibited substance. When his comment hit the press, he says he "was inundated with letters. Ninety-eight percent of them agreed with me and over half of those people said I'm glad you said it, but I wouldn't dare say it. The most poignant comment was from [a former member of the House of Representatives] who wrote and said I was glad to see your statement. I said that a few years ago and that's why I'm no longer a congressman!"

I asked Mr. Shultz if he thinks a more sensible approach might come from the states. He says "people can express themselves a little better at the state level." And, with respect to some liberalization of the drug-possession laws at the state level, "I regard these developments as a distinctive statement by people that the present system is not working very well and they want to change it."

It's nice to be in such pleasant, intelligent, and erudite company.

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