Pubdate: Fri, 21 Dec 2012
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Adam Nagourney

MARIJUANA, NOT YET LEGAL FOR CALIFORNIANS, MIGHT AS WELL BE

LOS ANGELES - Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana
trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it
means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical
matter, already legal in much of California.

No matter that its recreational use remains technically against the
law. Marijuana has, in many parts of this state, become the equivalent
of a beer in a paper bag on the streets of Greenwich Village. It is
losing whatever stigma it ever had and still has in many parts of the
country, including New York City, where the kind of open marijuana use
that is common here would attract the attention of any passing law
officer.

"It's shocking, from my perspective, the number of people that we all
know who are recreational marijuana users," said Gavin Newsom, the
lieutenant governor. "These are incredibly upstanding citizens:
Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people
are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it."

Marijuana can be smelled in suburban backyards in neighborhoods from
Hollywood to Topanga Canyon as dusk falls - what in other places is
known as the cocktail hour - often wafting in from three sides. In
some homes in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, it is offered at the
start of a dinner party with the customary ease of a host offering a
chilled Bombay Sapphire martini.

Lighting up a cigarette (the tobacco kind) can get you booted from
many venues in this rigorously anti-tobacco state. But no one seemed
to mind as marijuana smoke filled the air at an outdoor concert at the
Hollywood Bowl in September or even in the much more intimate,
enclosed atmosphere of the Troubadour in West Hollywood during a
Mountain Goats concert last week.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor, ticked off the
acceptance of open marijuana smoking in a list of reasons he thought
Venice was such a wonderful place for his morning bicycle rides. With
so many people smoking in so many places, he said in an interview this
year, there was no reason to light up one's own joint.

"You just inhale, and you live off everyone else," said Mr.
Schwarzenegger, who as governor signed a law decriminalizing
possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Some Californians react disdainfully to anyone from out of state who
still harbors illicit associations with the drug. Bill Maher, the
television host, was speaking about the prevalence of marijuana
smoking at dinner parties hosted by Sue Mengers, a retired Hollywood
agent famous for her high-powered gatherings of actors and
journalists, in an interview after her death last year. "I used to
bring her pot," he said. "And I wasn't the only one."

When a reporter sought to ascertain whether this was an on-the-record
conversation, Mr. Maher responded tartly: "Where do you think you are?
This is California in the year 2011."

John Burton, the state Democratic chairman, said he recalled an era
when the drug was stigmatized under tough antidrug laws. He called the
changes in thinking toward marijuana one of the two most striking
shifts in public attitude he had seen in 40 years here (the other was
gay rights).

"I can remember when your second conviction of having a single
marijuana cigarette would get you two to 20 in San Quentin," he said.

In a Field Poll of California voters conducted in October 2010, 47
percent of respondents said they had smoked marijuana at least once,
and 50 percent said it should be legalized. The poll was taken shortly
before Californians voted down, by a narrow margin, an initiative to
decriminalize marijuana.

"In a Republican year, the legalization came within two points," said
Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked on the campaign in
favor of the initiative. He said that was evidence of the "fact that
the public has evolved on the issue and is ahead of the pols."

A study by the California Office of Traffic Safety last month found
that motorists were more likely to be driving under the influence of
marijuana than under the influence of alcohol.

Still, there are limits. No matter how much attitudes in California
may have changed, it remains illegal in most of the country - as
Californians have been reminded by a series of crackdowns by the
Justice Department on medical marijuana here. People who use the drug
recreationally, who said they would think nothing of offering a
visitor a joint upon walking through the door, declined to be quoted
by name, citing the risks to career and professional concerns.

That was the case even as they talked about marijuana becoming
commonly consumed by professionals and not just, as one person put it,
activists and aging hippies. Descriptions of marijuana being offered
to arriving guests at parties, as an alternative to a beer, are common.

In places like Venice and Berkeley, marijuana has been a cultural
presence, albeit an underground one, since the 1960s. It began moving
from the edges after voters approved the legalization of medical
marijuana in 1996.

That has clearly been a major contributor to the mainstreaming of
marijuana. There is no longer any need for distasteful and legally
compromising entanglements with old-fashioned drug dealers, several
marijuana users said, because it is now possible to buy from a medical
marijuana shop or a friend, or a friend of a friend growing it for
ostensibly medical purposes.

That has also meant, several users said,,that the quality of marijuana
is more reliable and varied, and there are fewer concerns about
subsidizing a criminal network. It also means, it seems, prices here
are lower than they are in many parts of the country.

Mr. Newsom - who said he did not smoke marijuana himself - said that
the ubiquity of the drug had led him to believe that laws against it
were counterproductive and archaic. He supports its legalization, a
notable position for a Democrat widely considered one of the leading
contenders to be the next governor.

"These laws just don't make sense anymore," he said. "It's time for
politicians to come out of the closet on this." 
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