Pubdate: Tue, 20 Nov 2007
Source: cville (Charlottesville, VA)
Copyright: 2007 Portico Publications
Contact:  http://c-ville.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4536
Author: Jayson Whitehead
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

PROF ALMOST GOT POT PAST NIXON

Marijuana Commission Major Step In TJ Award Winner's Career

In 1969, Richard J. Bonnie was teaching at UVA's School  of Law, from 
which he had just graduated, when he read  about a case in Roanoke 
that involved a sentence of 20  years in jail for possession of a 
small amount of  marijuana. It was the height of the counterculture 
wars, and similar events were playing out around the  country. White 
Panther John Sinclair, for instance, was  sentenced to a decade in 
prison that same year for  possession of two joints and became an 
icon when John  Lennon named a song after him, demanding, "They 
gave  him 10 for two, what else could the bastards do?"

Bonnie, meanwhile, took a more scholarly approach. He  applied a 
cost-benefit analysis to drug laws that at  the time made no 
differentiation between hard drugs  like heroin and cocaine and 
lesser substances like  marijuana, and published a paper calling for 
reform. In  a volatile time of marches and riots, Bonnie's  practical 
approach was so refreshing that it soon  gained the notice of then 
U.S. president, Richard  Nixon. After a one-year stint in the Air 
Force, the  young attorney found himself on the National 
Commission  on Marijuana and Drug Abuse.

Serving as the Commission's executive director, Bonnie  and his 
cohorts issued a report two years later calling  for 
decriminalization of marijuana when it came to  private consumption, 
including possession for personal  use and casual nonprofit 
distribution. Instead of  penalization, the Commission called for 
more effort in the area of prevention. "We looked at drug use as 
a  public health problem as opposed to a moral problem,"  Bonnie says 
from his office in the UVA law school. "We  were trying to reduce the 
adverse social and welfare  consequences of the use of these drugs."

While Nixon decided against implementing their  suggestions, the 
nation was a different matter. During  the 1970s, 12 states 
decriminalized marijuana, Bonnie  testified before Congress twice, 
the UVA Press  published his research and findings in 1974 as The 
Marijuana Conviction and President Jimmy Carter  endorsed 
decriminalization nationwide. But then came  the monolithic backlash 
of Ronald Reagan and "Just Say  No."

By that time, Bonnie was director of UVA's Institute of  Law, 
Psychiatry and Public Policy, where he was using a  model he had 
perfected while with the Commission-what  he describes as a 
scientific approach to policy  making-for the areas of mental health 
and death penalty  law, among others. "We make so much policy 
without  actually thinking, measuring and paying attention 
to  whether we're getting the benefits we're trying to  get," he 
says. "Instead we make highly politicized,  moralized decisions."

For example, take the death penalty, Bonnie says. "One  of the issues 
is whether deterrence really has anything  to do with this. Or isn't 
the grounding of why we  continue to have the death penalty a set of 
intuitions  that people have about why you have to have the  ultimate 
penalty for certain kinds of really awful  things that human beings 
do to other human beings?" he  asks, pointing to sharp views on 
either side of the  issue. "Oliver Wendell Holmes called these kinds 
of attitudes the 'can't helps,' because people just can't  help 
feeling the way they do," he says. "If that's so,  it may be that the 
empirical features of this don't  really have much to do with it. 
…At some point,  the evidence is important in order to promote 
rational  informed decisions, even when they are driven by moral 
views," he says. "I think we can do better than we've  done."

Over 35 years of employing this type of pragmatic  approach has 
earned Bonnie two recent honors. In 2006,  he was picked to head the 
Commonwealth of Virginia  Commission of Mental Health Law. That body 
got much  more recognition following the April 16 Virginia Tech 
massacre because of the political support the killing  spree has 
brought to efforts to reform a severely  outdated mental health system.

"It would compound the [Tech] tragedy if we failed to  take advantage 
of the opportunity that it has  provided," he says.

Last month, Bonnie received the 2007 Thomas Jefferson  Award, UVA's 
highest honor, which he likens to winning  the Nobel Prize. "I've had 
a number of awards over the  course of my career, but there's 
something genuinely  special about receiving an award from the 
University  called the Thomas Jefferson Award, and to be in the 
company of the people who have received it previously,"  he says. 
"It's almost embarrassing actually."
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