Pubdate: Thu, 18 Sep 2008
Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Copyright: 2008 The Sun-Times Co.
Contact:  http://www.suntimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/81
Author: Jacob Sullum

PALIN'S DOUBLE STANDARD ON MARIJUANA

When it comes to questions about youthful marijuana use, Sarah Palin 
is no Slick Willie. "I can't claim a Bill Clinton and say that I 
never inhaled," the Republican vice presidential candidate told the 
Anchorage Daily News in 2006, before she was elected governor of Alaska.

Palin has the difficulty reconciling her personal experience with her 
policy positions, a problem also shared by former pot smoker Barack 
Obama. Neither of them has a persuasive answer to the question of why 
other Americans should be arrested for something they did with impunity.

Pot smokers who are arrested do not typically spend much time in 
jail. But as a 2007 report from the Center for Cognitive Liberty & 
Ethics noted, they pay a substantial cost that includes not only 
public humiliation and legal expenses but also collateral sanctions 
such as "revocation or suspension of professional licenses, barriers 
to employment or promotion, loss of educational aid, driver's license 
suspension, and bars on adoption, voting and jury service."

According to figures the FBI released this week, about 873,000 people 
were arrested on marijuana charges in the United States last year, a 
record. Pot busts accounted for nearly half of the 1.8 million drug 
arrests; as usual, the vast majority, about 775,000, were for simple 
possession, as opposed to cultivation or sale.

This is the fifth year in a row marijuana arrests have increased, an 
upward trend that began in the early 1990s. Three times as many 
people were arrested on marijuana charges last year as in 1991. The 
increase in arrests does not correspond to an increase in use; 
instead, the chance that any given pot smoker will be busted (though 
still small) is much higher than it was two decades ago. It is also 
higher than when Palin attended college in the '80s, which is 
presumably when she tried marijuana.

By way of extenuation, the Anchorage Daily News reported, Palin noted 
that marijuana "was legal under state law," although "illegal under 
U.S. law." In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the state 
constitution, which says the "right of the people to privacy is 
recognized and shall not be infringed," prohibits the government from 
punishing people for possessing small amounts of marijuana in their homes.

A 1990 ballot initiative ostensibly recriminalized all marijuana 
possession, but in 2003, the Alaska Court of Appeals ruled that "a 
statute which purports to attach criminal penalties to 
constitutionally protected conduct is void." The following year, the 
Alaska Supreme Court declined to hear the state's appeal of that decision.

In 2006, the state Legislature, at the urging of Palin's predecessor, 
Frank Murkowski, passed another law that supposedly made private 
possession of marijuana for personal use a crime. A judge found that 
law unconstitutional as well, and the Alaska Supreme Court is 
considering an appeal of her ruling.

The upshot is that smoking marijuana in the privacy of one's home is 
just as legal in Alaska today as it was when Palin did it. Evidently, 
she regrets this.

As Wasilla mayor in 2000, Palin championed a city council resolution 
opposing a ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana for 
adults. In March her administration asked the Alaska Supreme Court to 
reverse its 1975 decision shielding private marijuana use, arguing 
the drug is more dangerous than it used to be.

In other words, Palin got to smoke pot without worrying about legal 
consequences and now wants to deny that assurance to fellow Alaskans 
doing exactly the same thing. "Palin doesn't support legalizing 
marijuana," the Anchorage Daily News reported in 2006, because she 
worries about "the message it would send to her four kids."

It's Palin's job to teach her children that certain pleasures are 
reserved for grownups. The government should not continue to arrest 
adults who are harming no one simply because her children are easily confused. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake