Pubdate: Fri, 09 Mar 2012
Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2012 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact:  http://www.csmonitor.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/83
Author: Daniel B. Wood

PAT ROBERTSON BACKS LEGAL MARIJUANA. WILL OTHER CONSERVATIVES FOLLOW?

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for legal marijuana, 
saying the US incarceration rate is taking a social toll. Advocates 
call it an important moment, but critics dismiss it.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has become the lightning rod for 
a fresh, national dialogue over legal marijuana. He says the 
government's war on drugs has failed and so marijuana should be 
legalized and treated like alcohol.

"Folks, we've gotta do something about this. We've just got to change 
the laws. We cannot allow this to continue. It is sapping our 
vitality. Think of this great land of freedom," he said last week as 
host of "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network based in 
Virginia Beach, Va.

Marijuana advocates, not surprisingly, are applauding the move while 
antidrug groups are attacking Mr. Robertson's credibility, saying he 
has made several "strange remarks" in the past five years about 
prayer, tornadoes, and homosexuals.

Robertson's status as a high-profile conservative, however, makes his 
remarks symbolically important and indicative of wider shifts, say 
some academic observers.

"He's wrong about many things, but the fact that he is someone who 
usually represents the extreme conservative point of view makes the 
coming legalization debate more wide open now," says Robert MacCoun a 
professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, 
who follows marijuana laws.

Noting that Colorado and Washington have ballot measures this fall 
that would allow people under 21 to possess a small amount of 
marijuana and allow for commercial pot sales, Professor MacCoun says 
the Robertson comment helps break up polarized discussions.

"We can now have a more grown up discussion about what are the tools 
in the tool box  rather than just hyperlatives hurled at each side 
from the extremes," he says.

That could include current politics.

"It will be interesting to see how the tea party and presidential 
candidates will treat what Robertson is saying," says Robert Langran, 
a political scientist at Villanova University in Philadelphia. 
"Depending on what Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum say and do, this 
has the potential of creating another rift in the Republican Party."

Noting that America makes up 5 percent of the world's population but 
25 percent of jailed prisoners, Robertson said: "We've said, 'We're 
conservative, we're tough on crime.' That's baloney. It's costing us 
billions and billions of dollars. We need to scrub the federal code 
and the state codes and take away these criminal penalties."

Antidrug groups take issue with Robertson's judgment.

"Clearly he is ill-informed about the drug war," says Calvina Fay, 
executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation. She says in 
1978, 58 percent of high school seniors had used an illicit drug in 
the past year, compared with 28 percent in 1992  more than a 50 percent drop.

The numbers have crept back up to 40 percent, a trend she attributes 
both to the 16 states and Washington, D.C., which have legalized the 
medical use of marijuana, as well as the big push in California last 
fall to legalize recreational use through Proposition 19.

But she adds, "We are still well below the 1978 usage rate, hardly a 
complete failure."

For Paul Armentano, deputy director for the National Organization for 
the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the recent trends relate to a bigger 
picture. Polls have been shifting for three decades, showing that 
voters of all ages and both parties support regulating cannabis like 
alcohol, he says. At least 70 percent of Americans support legalizing 
medical marijuana, he says.

"When a person like Pat Robertson realizes that the immorality of 
jailing nonviolent marijuana users, keeping medicine away from the 
sick, and contributing to murder and mayhem in Latin America is far, 
far worse that the supposed immorality of using marijuana, we have 
reached a positive turning point in the debate," adds Morgan Fox of 
the Marijuana Policy Project in an e-mail. "We are starting to see 
more people's moral judgments aligning themselves with the realities 
of marijuana prohibition."

Critics, however, worry that Robertson's comments only hurt antidrug efforts.

"If you work and live in the world of addiction, a world where you 
have your sleeves rolled up and are dealing with the true impact that 
drugs have on society, you just may have something to say to people 
like Pat Robertson, who so cavalierly come out with a statement like 
this," says Richard Taite, founder of Cliffside Malibu, an addiction 
treatment center, in an e-mail.

Adds Robert DuPont, president of the Institute for Behavior and 
Health: "I think he's acting out of his sense of compassion and 
thinks he is being reasonable, but that he is drinking the Kool-Aid 
of the pro-marijuana forces."

Recently, Robertson said that God could have stopped the tornadoes 
that swept the Midwest if more people had been praying. He also said 
in December that homosexual people can "un-acquire" the lifestyle.
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