It's Time To Legalize Marijuana

By Keith Boykin, in politics
Tuesday, June 13 2006, 9:00AM

Last night I attended the annual awards gala for the Marijuana Policy Project, and I came away more convinced than ever that marijuana should be legalized. I sat at the table next to Montel Williams, who delivered a very personal keynote address in which he roamed the room with a wireless microphone and talked about his own need for medical marijuana to deal with the pain associated with multiple sclerosis. I've known Montel for two years now, and I've never seen him more emotional. He told us how he had lost a friend in the past few days and he even cried as he shared his own ordeal of taking nearly a hundred pills a day to treat his condition.

After 22 years of serving the country in the military, he said, he should not be made to feel like a criminal just because he needs a drug to keep him healthy and out of pain. And that, of course, is what this debate is all about. It's not really about science or health. It's about politics. And once again, as is the case with needle exchange programs and safe sex education, the conservative forces in our government are all too willing to put irrational political concerns above the legitimate public health needs of our country.

Although I have long supported the legalization of marijuana, even I was stunned by some of the facts I learned last night. For example, I had no idea that 95 to 100 million Americans admit to having tried marijuana, and about 14.5 million say they use it at least monthly.

No matter what the politicians say, marijuana is a part of our life, from the suburbs to the inner city. Despite decades of silly "Just Say No" campaigns targeted at young people, high school seniors consistently report that marijuana is easily available. About 85 percent of them consider marijuana “fairly easy” or “very easy” to obtain. And here's the shocker. More U.S. high school students smoke marijuana than smoke cigarettes.

The Government Gives Out Weed

I'm not sure when the anti-marijuana push became so serious, but I don't think anyone seriously believes that marijuana is as dangerous as many other drugs and controlled substances. For many Americans, we rightly consider cigarettes to be more dangerous than marijuana. That's why it's so hard to make sense of zero tolerance policies practiced by the federal government.

It wasn't always that way. At a time when science was used to dictate public health policy, the federal government actually allowed patients to use marijuana as a medicine. The government program is still operating but it is closed to new applicants. Only seven patients in the U.S. are currently enrolled in the program, and the government actually sends them a case of joints every month. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. Last night, the Marijuana Policy Project auctioned off an actual federally-supplied marijuana case provided by one of the seven remaining participants in the program. Montel Williams purchased the case for $1000.

Although the government actually gives out marijuana with one hand, it uses its other hand to criminalize doctors, patients and recreational users who have anything to do with the drug. Doctors are legally allowed to prescribe cocaine and morphine, but not marijuana.

Punishment Is Not The Solution

In our pseudo "tough on crime" culture, politicians have been trained to compete with one another to prove how hard they can be on marijuana users. As a result, we've seen more than 7 million marijuana arrests in the United States since 1995. In 2004, we even set a new record, with almost 772,000 arrests for marijuana. That's more arrests than for all violent crimes combined that year. To put it another way, one person is arrested for marijuana every 41 seconds. And almost 9 out of 10 of these arrests are for possession, not for manufacture or distribution.

Under federal law, if a college student simply sells a joint to his roommate, he is subject to a mandatory one-year minimum sentence. That's because federal law requires the mandatory minimum for “distributing” or “manufacturing” controlled substances within 1,000 feet of any school, university, or playground.

The Marijuana Policy Project estimates that up to 40,000 Americans are in prison or jail on marijuana charges right now. That's more than the entire prison populations of eight European countries combined. That makes no sense.

Change Is Coming

Fortunately, change is coming, albeit slowly. Eleven states have passed laws legalizing medical marijuana for use, possession, and cultivation. The most recent state, Rhode Island, passed the law by overriding the governor's veto.

Fifty-five percent of Americans believe possession of small amounts of marijuana should not be treated as a criminal offense, and 78 percent support “making marijuana legally available for doctors to prescribe in order to reduce pain and suffering.”

Change never comes easily, and given the recent conservative tide in the country, it is easy to think that change may never come. But sometimes the people are smarter than their leaders. The people know that marijuana is not a menace to society, and they especially know that marijuana can actually help to save some people's lives. And that's really the issue. Given the choice between pushing a right-wing political agenda and saving lives, most Americans are smart enough to choose the latter.

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