Pubdate: Sun, 05 Mar 2006
Source: Columbia Daily Tribune (MO)
Copyright: 2006 Columbia Daily Tribune
Contact:  http://www.columbiatribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/91
Note: Prints the street address of LTE writers.
Author: Greg Miller
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?219 (Students for Sensible Drug Policy)

STUDENT GROUP DRUMS UP OPPOSITION TO DRUG WAR

Gary Davey smokes marijuana and credits the drug with relieving pain 
from injuries he received in a head-on collision that shattered most 
of his bones from the waist down and confined him to a wheelchair in 1989.

G.J. McCarthy photo Corley Koprowski, a University of 
Missouri-Columbia freshman, is in the audience yesterday as panelists 
Andrea Brandon, left, of Urbana, Ill., and Heather De Mian of 
Columbia, right, discuss the medicinal use of marijuana during a 
conference of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy in the MU Arts and 
Science Building.

"The benefit that is available to these people is incredible," Davey 
said, referring to the use of marijuana. "There were times I 
literally couldn't work."

Davey, 44, shared his story yesterday at the Students for Sensible 
Drug Policy Midwest Regional Conference. The medicinal marijuana 
session Davey participated in was one of more than a dozen events 
held at the University of Missouri-Columbia campus.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a nationwide organization of 
college students against the war on drugs, chose Columbia because of 
the success of marijuana-related Propositions 1 and 2 in 2004. Cliff 
Thornton, a lawyer and Green Party gubernatorial candidate in 
Connecticut, was keynote speaker.

Thornton's drug reform group, Efficacy, was one of 10 sponsors for 
the weekend gathering. Other sponsors are the Missouri chapter of the 
National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, the Cannabis Action 
Network, Green Aid and the Missouri Cannabis Coalition.

"These drugs are not the problem; the drug policies are the problem," 
Thornton said in an interview before the conference. "The drug war 
has placed the African-American community into a de-evolving state."

Thornton, who is black, said drug laws that impose greater penalties 
for crack cocaine violations than for powder cocaine offenses are 
specifically designed to target black and lower-class people. That 
means taxes are funding incarceration of people who otherwise could 
be paying taxes, Thornton said. "That's why most inner cities are so 
poor," he said.

Speakers at the conference included the associate county commissioner 
of Marion County, Willy Richmond, and a former prosecutor from Kansas 
City, Kan., Brian Leininger.

"It's scary, more than anything, how these laws have gotten stricter 
and stricter," Richmond said in a panel discussion of drug statutes. 
"It's not accomplishing anything."

Leininger called the drug war "not only a failure but 
counterproductive. ... It took me a lot of time, I think, to come 
around. But I certainly saw how fruitless it was."

Columbia Police Chief Randy Boehm, who did not attend the conference, 
said he believes the war on drugs is working. "I don't think our 
policies target poor and minorities," he said.

Boehm said the majority of drug-related calls that Columbia police 
deal with are sales and activity in poorer areas. "The best we can 
hope for is to ... cut down on violence that's related to drug 
activity," he said.

The Students for Sensible Drug Policy Web site says the group 
endorses "personal choice and freedom so long as a person's actions 
do not infringe upon another's freedoms or safety."

But Boehm said that "drugs are not only harmful to the individual but 
harmful to the community. I think that it does inherently infringe 
upon the safety of the community."

Thornton said the prohibition of drugs has led to a black market that 
creates violence and makes drugs cheaper and more accessible to the public.

"The only way you're going to solve this problem is to bring these 
drugs inside the law," he said.

Joe Bartlett, president of the MU chapter of Students for a Sensible 
Drug Policy, said the conference is an opportunity to spread 
information about their campaign with students from other colleges. 
He estimated 100 people are participating in the three-day event, 
including 50 or 60 from outside Columbia.

Lisa Davey doesn't see her husband's use of marijuana as a threat to 
the safety of her community in St. Louis.

"The fact that this is an illegal drug is a sin," she said. "The use 
of marijuana has given us a near-normal life."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman