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." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom