Pubdate: Fri, 05 Apr 2013
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2013 The Washington Post Company
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Jonathan Rauch
Note: Jonathan Rauch is a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution 
and the author of "Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for 
Straights, and Good for America."
Page: A11

DOWN THE AISLE TO LEGALIZED POT

Same-Sex Marriage Offers a Good Template for a Second Hot-Button Social Issue

The recent finding, in a Washington Post-ABC News poll, that support 
for same-sex marriage has reached a remarkable 58 percent of 
Americans should make the Obama administration think hard. Not about 
same-sex marriage but about marijuana.

Anytime now, Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to make an 
announcement about marijuana, one of the administration's trickier 
policy problems. In November, two states, Colorado and Washington, 
passed ballot initiatives - by strong margins - to legalize marijuana 
use. Both states established regulatory systems akin to those for 
alcohol, though Washington's is somewhat more stringent. And both 
states acted in defiance of federal marijuana policy: The 1970 
Controlled Substances Act makes marijuana illegal and places it in 
the same class as heroin.

How should the administration respond to this frontal challenge? The 
answer is: View it not as a threat but as an opportunity.

Many drug warriors disagree. They want the federal government to 
threaten state-licensed marijuana growers and distributors, and their 
bankers and landlords, with criminal enforcement. Several former 
directors of the Drug Enforcement Administration recently called on 
President Obama to launch a lawsuit preempting the states' actions, 
much as he did in challenging Arizona's immigration law a few years 
ago. (The Supreme Court delivered a mixed ruling on that challenge.)

Squashing the states, however, is easier said than done. All but a 
small fraction of the people who enforce the marijuana laws work for 
state and local governments and answer to state law. Although states 
cannot break federal law, neither must they step in and enforce it. 
Federal prosecutors probably could shut down regulated marijuana 
distributors in Colorado and Washington with relative ease by sending 
threatening letters to landlords and bankers. But that would leave 
those states, and others that follow, with the option of legalizing 
marijuana without regulating it, because unconditional legalization 
under state law is indisputably within the states' power. The effect 
of removing states' troops from the battlefield would be to strand 
the federal government with marijuana laws it could not enforce.

The chaos that might result would be counterproductive even (or 
especially) for drug hawks. Instead of shutting down the states' 
experiments, then, the federal government might better serve the 
policy goals of the Controlled Substances Act by working with 
Colorado and Washington to concentrate federal and state enforcement 
on high federal priorities, such as preventing legalized marijuana 
from spilling across state borders.

There is another, more positive, case for cooperation as well. It is 
best understood by looking at the lessons of same-sex marriage.

In a number of important respects, marijuana legalization and 
same-sex marriage track closely. Both are controversial social issues 
about which public opinion has changed dramatically in the past few 
years; on both issues, polls show the public closely divided but 
tipping toward legalization.

Moreover, for both issues, young people are driving the trend; older 
opponents of legalizing both are exiting the scene. The issues' 
demographics suggest that public opinion is virtually certain to 
continue shifting. A true national consensus, however, remains some 
distance away, and partisan and regional differences are sharp.

In recent years, the country has pushed many controversial issues - 
abortion, crime, education - up to the federal level. But same-sex 
marriage has taken the opposite path, with leadership left to the 
states. The result, though somewhat messy as policy, has been a 
remarkable political success at a time when the country has few to 
boast of. That some states could try same-sex marriage without 
betting the whole country reduced the stakes and contained the 
conflict. States' experiments with gay marriage educed valuable 
information about its real-world consequences, or lack thereof, 
allowing for a better-informed, more rational debate.

Above all, localizing the dispute gave people across the country time 
to work out what they think and to adjust policies as public opinion 
changed. Had the country locked in a federal constitutional amendment 
banning gay marriage in the mid-2000s, policy and public opinion 
would today be drifting inexorably into conflict.

State leadership on marijuana policy has all of the same advantages 
as on marriage. It contains conflict by reducing the stakes; educes 
knowledge about what happens if marijuana policy is changed; and 
allows incremental adjustment to social change. For the federal 
government, yielding some measure of control over marijuana policy to 
the states is not a threat; it is an opportunity to manage change and 
preserve options. Painting federal policy into a corner serves no 
one, not even drug warriors.

There is, however, an important difference between marriage and 
marijuana. States have run family policy since colonial times; 
letting them lead on marriage was the default option. Marijuana will 
be much harder. The federal government has led the war on drugs for 
decades, and its ban on marijuana is written into not just federal 
statute but also into several international treaties as well.

Avoiding a state-federal train wreck over marijuana policy will not 
happen automatically. Finding a cooperative path requires creativity 
and energy from both levels of government. But the alternative won't 
satisfy anyone, at least not for long.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom