Pubdate: Sat, 04 Aug 2012
Source: International Herald-Tribune (International)
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2012
Contact:  http://global.nytimes.com/?iht
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/212
Author: Bill Maher
Note: Bill Maher is the host of "Real Time With Bill Maher" on HBO.

HOW LEGALIZING POT COULD CHANGE THE U.S.

Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution. by Doug Fine. 319 
Pages. Illustrated. Gotham Books, $28; Ukp17.

"Too High to Fail" is a good rebuttal to those who say stoners never 
accomplish anything. Doug Fine did.

He has written a well-researched book that uses the clever tactic of 
making the moral case for ending marijuana prohibition by burying it 
inside the economic case. We've become a ruthless society, and almost 
everything (I'm looking at you, Environment and Health Care) has to 
be sold as "first, it's good for business." To his credit, Mr. Fine 
doesn't do what so many of us do and scream, "Can't we just stop 
jailing potheads because that would be the right thing?" Also to his 
credit, he never admits he's one of them.

The "war on drugs" is America's longest war. It has cost taxpayers $1 
trillion in the past 40 years, Mr. Fine notes, and it has turned the 
United States into "the most highly incarcerated society in history." 
In 2011, a global commission on drug policy - whose members included 
Paul Volcker, a former head of the Federal Reserve; George P. Shultz, 
a former secretary of state; and former presidents of Brazil, 
Colombia and Mexico - declared that "the global war on drugs has 
failed." Sixty-seven percent of Americans agree. Justice Antonin 
Scalia of the Supreme Court and the evangelist Pat Robertson are now 
to the left of President Barack Obama on pot.

In a way, the author of a polemic on marijuana policy suffers from 
the odd case of having too many facts on his side. To a person coming 
to this subject pot-agnostic, it might seem as if the issue is being 
loaded. No, it is loaded. As Mr. Fine points out, the real addicts of 
the drug war are the law enforcement agencies that live off this 
senseless game of cops and robbers.

"Too High to Fail" takes the form of a fly-on-the-wall account of 
Northern California's burgeoning legal cannabis industry. Mr. Fine, 
an investigative journalist, takes us to Mendocino County, where he 
follows one plant from seed to medical marijuana patient in the first 
county in the nation to decriminalize and regulate cannabis farming.

Mr. Fine fits in well in Mendocino. Bearded and driving his 
vegetable-oilfueled truck, he looks and plays the part. But be 
warned: If you are indifferent to drug culture, you may roll your 
eyes at some of the stoner talk. WhenMr. Fine says, describing a 
Mendocino grow house, "I felt like I was inside a Peter Tosh album 
cover photo," even I wanted to tell him he was harshing my mellow.

Mendocino County is depicted here as a kind of democratic utopia 
where local law enforcement and cannabis farmers are on the same 
side. In 2008, the county passed a land-use ordinance called Chapter 
9.31, which authorized growers to cultivate up to 99 cannabis plants. 
This has since been reduced to 25. Rather than turning the county 
into a police state, legalization made it safer. Revenues in the 
municipality increased and cannabis farmers were treated as 
law-abiding citizens.

Mr. Fine calls Mendocino the state's "progressive lab," because it 
was essentially engaging in an act of civil disobedience.

The most eye-opening and persuasive parts of the book explore the 
revenue and benefits to be had from cannabis without a single joint's 
being lighted. Throughout human history, cultures from Mongolia to 
Peru have used the nonpsychoactive cannabis plant for food, shelter, 
clothing and medicine. Early drafts of the Declaration of 
Independence were written on hemp paper, and the covered pioneer 
wagons that took America westward were made of cannabis fiber. In 
1942, cannabis prohibition was suspended because of a shortage in 
industrial supply during the war, and the government actually 
encouraged farmers to grow it, using a propaganda film, "Hemp for Victory."

The place industrial cannabis is not found yet, Mr. Fine points out, 
is in the above-ground American economy, thanks to its listing as a 
Schedule I narcotic. The Drug Enforcement Administration's official 
stance is that it has no medical value at all: "Smoked marijuana has 
not withstood the rigors of science - it is not medicine, and it is not safe."

O.K., Mr.Fine seems to say, but tell that to the doctors with 
evidence of its ability to shrink tumors and ease the effects of 
chemotherapy; or to the seniors of Orange County who depend on 
medical marijuana to treat their arthritis, and the doctor who uses 
it to treat his glaucoma; or to the 30-year-old Iraq war veteran with 
the shrapnel injuries who thanks God every day for this drug. It is 
prescription drugs that are now the leading cause of fatal drug 
overdoses - more than 26,000 a year. Also each year, more than 23,000 
Americans die of alcohol-related causes. None has died from cannabis alone.

As I said, the issue is loaded. Yet the side that has all the load 
never seems to win in America. The ending of "Too High to Fail" - 
spoiler alert - is a real bummer. Just as Mr. Fine was about to send 
the manuscript to his publisher in November 2011, the feds cracked 
down in Mendocino. The 9.31 program was essentially abandoned, and 
the local, participatory democracy Mr. Fine immersed himself in for a 
year was pushed back underground.

He should have seen it coming. Halfway through his adventure, Mr. 
Fine was pulled over by a state trooper when he left the friendly 
confines of Mendocino and crossed into Sonoma County - where it's 
cool to get high on wine, but not on pot.

Relating how he was taken into custody, Mr. Fine describes something 
he calls "Panzer's Paradox" - basically, the fact that "when it comes 
to distribution, there is no uniformity in cannabis legal 
interpretation now," as William Panzer, a lawyer specializing in 
cannabis defense, says. (Mr. Panzer was an author of Proposition 215, 
the medical-marijuana act passed in California in 1996.) Mr. Fine 
boils down the difference between a cannabis-friendly county and an 
unfriendly one to "the career ambitions or personal cannabis views of 
the local D.A. and sheriff."

He also paraphrases "The Art of War": "If a war is ill conceived at 
its core, it can't be won."
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