Friday, October 29, 2010

SHOWDOWN

In a few days, California voters will go to the polls and, in addition to voting for various candidates, will vote on Proposition 19 – the legalization of marijuana (within certain limits). During the last few weeks, rhetoric has been flying from both sides, frequently using emotion instead of fact to make their arguments. Let’s get a few facts clear before we go on.
1. Marijuana is not known to be physiologically addictive,
2. There had never been a death recorded as a result of using marijuana (not counting accidents, etc.),
3. Except for the fact that it is frequently sold by the same people who sell cocaine and heroin, there is no credible evidence that marijuana is any more of a “gateway” drug than tobacco or alcohol (perhaps less),
4. Each year, hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of dollars are spent in a fruitless attempt to interdict marijuana and keep it off of the market, with the only effect being an increased street price for the vendors, and thousands of young people having their lives ruined by being arrested and jailed for possession of a ground up plant,
5. The situation with marijuana, today, is analogous to that at the end of the Prohibition era; the fight against alcohol created “organized crime,” and funneled all of the revenue to them, allowing for political corruption on an unprecedented scale, wholesale murders and imprisonment of low level distributors while those at the top lived rich lives.

Does all this sound familiar? Have you watched the wanton killings in Mexico revolving around the marijuana trade? Are you proud that we have the highest percentage of our population imprisoned than almost any other nation in the world (including China)?

We are now about to have a “Constitutional Crisis.” Nineteen states have legalized “Medical Marijuana,” and now California is set to be the first to simply legalize it; period. Unfortunately, the federal government, claiming jurisdiction of the Controlled Substances Act under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution has kept marijuana (including medical marijuana) illegal – a “Schedule I” drug despite a large plurality of the medical profession’s acceptance of its usefulness. The Crisis:
1. Federal law supersedes state laws but continuing marijuana under Schedule I is contrary to the criteria which Congress established within the body of the Controlled Substances Act itself (i.e. having no accepted medical use),
2. The determination of what constitutes proper medical practice is constitutionally relegated to the states, and the federal government has no authority to decide it,
3. An increasing number of states are legalizing marijuana, medically or otherwise, despite federal laws against it and,
4. The legalization and taxation of marijuana would create a (modest but important) revenue stream for the states and federal government, remove it from organized crime, end the need for nearly 50% of our jailed population to be incarcerated, and have no demonstrably adverse effect on the remainder of our population.

It’s a shame there is no mechanism for people to place a “Proposition 19” on most states’ or the federal ballot.