Pubdate: Wed, 07 Nov 2012
Source: Forbes Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2012 Forbes Inc.
Contact:  http://www.forbes.com/forbes/current/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/769
Author: E#rik Kain

WHAT TUESDAY'S MARIJUANA VICTORIES MEAN FOR THE WAR ON DRUGS

Voters in three states helped overturn marijuana prohibition this past
Tuesday, but the War on Drugs is far from over.

Colorado voters celebrate the passage of Amendment 64 in Denver
(AP/Daylife)

Election day was a big win for the president, Democrats in the Senate
and Republicans in the House, and for advocates of gay marriage in
Maine and Maryland.

It was also a big win for an issue that's been gaining support at a
surprising clip over the past decade or so: the end to marijuana
prohibition.

In three states-Washington, Colorado, and Massachusetts-efforts to
liberalize marijuana laws succeeded last night. In Washington and
Colorado, the new laws enacted go even further than past efforts. In
these two states, fully regulated recreational pot use has now been
approved by voters.

Maybe these victories shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, in 2011
Gallup found that a plurality of Americans support the legalization of
marijuana, and in 2010 fully 70% of Americans supported using
marijuana to alleviate pain and suffering.

What does all this mean for the four-decade-old War on
Drugs?

"The decisive victories last night will go a long way toward helping
more elected officials to understand that marijuana reform is a
mainstream, majority-support position," Tom Angell, the chairman
ofMarijuana Majority, tells me. "Too many politicians who realize that
the marijuana laws are broken and need to change are reluctant to
speak out publicly or take legislative action because they mistakenly
assume that will be marginalized or attacked as "soft on crime." But
as these votes showed, and as the Gallup poll revealing nationwide
majority support for marijuana legalization demonstrates, the public
is ready for marijuana reform and will reward elected officials who
take action toward that end."

While not every state pushing for legalization met with success-Oregon
followed on the heels of the failed 2010 Prop 19 in California-more
will likely jump on the bandwagon in coming years.

Angell thinks California will likely try again in 2014 or 2016, though
the size of that state makes any campaign for full legalization there
expensive and daunting.

"I do think you will see polling support for legalization go up
significantly now that Colorado and Washington have taken the first
step and shown that legalization is possible," he adds. "Other states
to look to would be Massachusetts, which decriminalized marijuana
possession in 2008 and passed medical marijuana this year; Rhode
Island, which could well be the first state to enact legalization via
a state legislature as opposed to by voter initiative; and Vermont."

And Oregon hopefully, Angell says. With a better organized and better
funded campaign, next time pro-legalization advocates could see a win.

The big question now looming over states with liberalized marijuana
laws is what the federal government and the Obama Administration will
do.

"Ninety-nine out of a hundred marijuana arrests are performed under
state and local, and not federal, laws, so these measures will
effectively protect citizens in Colorado and Washington from being
arrested for marijuana possession," Angell tells me.

Perhaps just as importantly Angell points out that while the Obama
administration came out forcefully against California's Prop 19 in
2010, no similar move was made in 2012. Angell is optimistic. "It
seems that even the Obama administration may be starting to realize
that standing in the way of majority-supported, much-needed marijuana
law reform is bad politics."

For one thing, at least for now marijuana consumers in Washington and
Colorado can rest easy.

"Once the state legislators conclude their business of crafting new
state policy, which shouldn't be all too complicated, if they refer to
existing models of alcohol and tobacco, state and local police will
abide by the new law, period," Neill Franklin, the Executive Director
of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) tells me. "I believe
that the new law should prohibit state and local authorities from
acting in concert with federal authorities where there would be
conflict with the new state laws. Local authorities being recruited by
President Nixon during the onset of the drug war in the early
seventies is partially the blame for what's wrong with drug
enforcement today."

With law enforcement focused on stopping violent crime rather than
arresting marijuana users, police and other public servants will see a
host of new opportunities opened up to them according to Franklin,
including better community relations.

"There will be far fewer reasons for racial profiling and unjustified
searches of one's person, places and affects," he notes, adding that
we'll also see "less money for criminal gangs and less involvement in
the violent drug trade. This is another public safety win. This will
be one heavy blow to the cartel in these two states."

There's a lot of money flowing into the War on Drugs each year, and a
lot more money spent making sure it's never won.

Harvard economics professor and author of Drug War Crimes: The
Consequences of Prohibition, Jeffrey Miron, tells me that the budgetary
impact is relatively negligible, clocking in somewhere between $15-20
billion per year, but the impact on liberty is impossible to ignore.

Still, all that money can create incentives to keep the machine
humming. Many peoples' livelihoods are directly impacted by the number
of prison beds filled or the number of arrests made.

Even so, ending the War on Drugs would be a net gain, even to the
people working in law enforcement LEAP's Franklin tells me.

"There will be some benefactors who lose out," he says, "but law
enforcement is not one. Law enforcement will benefit. No cops or
prison guards will be laid off. There is plenty of neglected police
work to be done. The streets and prisons will become safer. Crowded
prisons are dangerous prisons and they breed a more savvy and
dangerous criminal who will eventually return to the streets. Will
there be less overtime? Possibly. Will there be less property and
funds seized? I certainly hope so. But this is all good stuff for the
people and the community. Tensions between police and citizens should
relax some, making way for improved relationships."

So who are the real losers?

Franklin sees some private companies taking a hit, including "private
prison corporations, Dupont (textiles), the alcohol industry, big
pharma, etc."

He adds, "I could care less and so will most citizens. The benefits
for police and community greatly out weigh any costs. The industrial
hemp industry alone, which we currently import from the likes of
Canada, will be enormous for our economic growth."

Harvard's Miron has written extensively about marijuana prohibition,
and tends to be less bullish about the economic growth we can expect
to see from legalization.

"For marijuana only," Miron wrote in a column at CNBC, "the magnitudes
are modest, so it is easy to exaggerate this benefit."

But really, that may be beside the point.

"In a free society, the presumption must be that people can smoke,
snort, eat or inject whatever they wish, so long as they do not harm
others," Mironargues. "The burden of proof should rest on those who
would ban marijuana, not those who want it legal. That burden has
never been met."

So far the DEA, has remained cagey following the ballot successes in
Colorado and Washington.

"My sense is that it is unlikely the federal government is going to
allow states one by one to unilaterally decriminalize marijuana,"
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said after the results were in.

"The Drug Enforcement Administration's enforcement of the Controlled
Substances Act remains unchanged," the DEA said in a press statement.
"In enacting the Controlled Substances Act, Congress determined that
marijuana is a Schedule I control[ed] substance. The Department of
Justice is reviewing the ballot initiatives and we have no additional
comment at this time."

If these measures are taken to the Supreme Court, it could end badly
for the anti-prohibitionist movement given the current line-up of justices.

All told, while we may be approaching a tipping point, and while we
can hope for a more amenable Obama Administration in his second term
in office, the fight remains an uphill battle.

The combination of a controversial new approach to regulating
substances and tens of billions of dollars means this process will
likely drag on for years to come.

Nor does the success of full-blown legalization in Colorado and
Washington mean that we'll see a hard shift away from medical
marijuana measures.

I asked Marijuana Majority's Tom Angell if the success in those states
signifies a shift away from medical marijuana arguments toward full
legalization. Not exactly, he told me.

"I think the two-track model will continue for some time with
activists leading efforts to legalize marijuana in places where
polling suggests significant support, while advocates in other places
try for the somewhat easier win of allowing medical marijuana and at
least getting ill people off the battlefield of the "war on drugs.""

The degree to which all of these efforts may succeed or fail may come
down to a question of demographics. Young people of all political
backgrounds tend to be far more supportive of liberalized drug laws in
general.

But while that may mean that the end to the War on Drugs may simply
boil down to a long, frustrating wait, the issue will almost certainly
continue to come up in the intervening years, as more and more states
continue to at least nudge the ball in the right direction.

It seems that even four years after the words were popularized by the
Obama campaign, hope and change may still have a role to play after
all. But so will doubt and despair.
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MAP posted-by: Matt