Pubdate: Sun, 30 Jun 2013
Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV)
Copyright: 2013 The Associated Press
Contact: http://www.reviewjournal.com/about/print/press/letterstoeditor.html
Website: http://www.lvrj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/233
Author: Nancy Benac and Alicia A. Caldwell, The Associated Press

DEBATE EVOLVES SINCE 'REEFER MADNESS'

States Moving Quickly Toward Legalizing Pot Amid Conflicting Claims

WASHINGTON (AP) - It took 50 years for American attitudes about 
marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of "Reefer Madness" to the 
excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of "Just Say No."

The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously 
"didn't inhale," to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.

Now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so 
dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion 
legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and 
states are moving to approve the drug for medical use and just for fun.

It is a moment in America that is rife with contradictions:

People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals 
more about the drug's potential dangers, particularly for young people.

States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a 
federal prohibition on its use.

Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high 
federal hurdles to research.

Federal policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.

Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for 
a commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees 
the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more laissez-faire 
approach without full deliberation.

"It's a remarkable story historically," he says. "But as a matter of 
public policy, it's a little worrisome."

It's more than a little worrisome to those in the anti-drug movement.

"We're on this hundred-mile-an-hour freight train to legalizing a 
third addictive substance," says Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy 
adviser in the Obama administration, lumping marijuana with tobacco 
and alcohol.

Legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the 
Drug Policy Alliance, likes the direction the marijuana smoke is 
wafting. But he knows his side has considerable work yet to do.

"I'm constantly reminding my allies that marijuana is not going to 
legalize itself," he says.

MAJORITY FAVORS LEGALIZATION

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use 
of marijuana for medical purposes since California voters made the 
first move in 1996. Voters in Colorado and Washington state took the 
next step last year and approved pot for recreational use. Alaska is 
likely to vote on the same question in 2014, and a few other states 
are expected to put recreational use on the ballot in 2016.

Nearly half of adults have tried marijuana, 12 percent of them in the 
past year, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

Fifty-two percent of adults favor legalizing marijuana, up 11 
percentage points since 2010, according to Pew.

Sixty percent think the federal government shouldn't enforce federal 
laws against marijuana in states that have approved its use.

Where California led the charge on medical marijuana, the next 
chapter in this story is being written in Colorado and Washington state.

Policymakers there are grappling with sticky issues revolving around 
one central question: How do you legally regulate the production, 
distribution, sale and use of marijuana for recreational purposes 
when federal law bans all of the above?

The Justice Department began reviewing the matter after November's 
election. But seven months later, states still are on their own.

Both sides in the debate paid close attention when Obama said in 
December that "it does not make sense, from a prioritization point of 
view, for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has 
already said that under state law that's legal."

POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who favors legalization, 
predicts the federal government will take a hands-off approach, based 
on Obama's comments.

The government already has taken a similar approach toward users in 
states that have approved marijuana for medical use. It doesn't go 
after pot-smoking cancer patients or grandmas with glaucoma. But it 
also has made clear that people who are in the business of growing, 
selling and distributing marijuana on a large scale are subject to 
potential prosecution for violations of the Controlled Substances Act 
- - even in states that have legalized medical use.

There is a political calculus for the president or any other politician.

Younger people, who tend to vote more Democratic, are more supportive 
of legalizing marijuana, as are people in the West, where a 
libertarian streak runs strong.

Despite increasing public acceptance of marijuana overall, 
politicians know complications could come with commercializing an 
addictive substance. Opponents of pot are particularly worried that 
legalization will result in increased use by young people.

Sabet frames the conundrum for Obama: "Do you want to be the 
president that stops a popular cause, especially a cause that's 
popular within your own party? Or do you want to be the president 
that enables youth drug use that will have ramifications down the road?"

Marijuana legalization advocates offer politicians a rosier scenario, 
in which legitimate pot businesses eager to keep their operating 
licenses make sure not to sell to minors.

"Having a regulated system is the only way to ensure that we're not 
ceding control of this popular substance to the criminal market and 
to black marketeers," says Aaron Smith, director of the National 
Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group for legal pot businesses 
in the United States.

CALIFORNIA CITIES LIMIT SHOPS

While the federal government hunkers down, Colorado and Washington 
state are moving forward on their own with regulations covering 
everything from how plants will be grown to how many stores will be allowed.

Tim Lynch, director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Project on 
Criminal Justice, predicts "the next few years are going to be messy" 
as states work to bring a black-market industry into the sunshine.

California's experience with medical marijuana offers a window into 
potential pitfalls that can come with wider availability of pot.

Dispensaries for medical marijuana have proliferated in the state, 
and regulation has been lax.

In May, the California Supreme Court ruled that cities and counties 
can ban medical marijuana dispensaries, and a number of cities have done that.

A few weeks after the ruling, Los Angeles voters approved a ballot 
measure that limits the number of pot shops in the city to 135, down 
from an estimated high of about 1,000.

This isn't full-scale buyer's remorse, but more a course correction 
before the inevitable next push for full-on marijuana legalization in 
the state.

MORE POWERFUL POT

Growing support for legalization doesn't mean everybody wants to 
light up. Barely one in 10 Americans used pot in the past year.

Those who do want to see marijuana legalized range from libertarians 
who oppose government intervention to people who want to see an 
activist government aggressively regulate marijuana production and sales.

For some, money talks: Why let drug cartels rake in untaxed profits 
when a cut could go into government coffers?

There are other threads in the growing acceptance of pot.

People think marijuana is not as dangerous as once believed. They 
worry about high school kids getting an arrest record. They see 
racial inequity in the way marijuana laws are enforced. And they are 
weary of the "war on drugs."

Opponents counter with a 2012 study finding that regular use of 
marijuana during teen years can lead to a long-term drop in IQ. 
Another study indicates marijuana use can induce and exacerbate 
psychotic illness in susceptible people. They question the notion 
that regulating pot will bring in big money, saying revenue estimates 
are grossly exaggerated.

They reject the claim that prisons are bulging with people convicted 
of simple possession by citing federal statistics showing only a 
small percentage of federal and state inmates are behind bars for that alone.

They warn that baby boomers who draw on their own innocuous 
experiences with pot are overlooking the much higher potency of 
today's marijuana.

In 2009, concentrations of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, 
averaged close to 10 percent in marijuana, compared with about 4 
percent in the 1980s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"If marijuana legalization was about my old buddies at Berkeley 
smoking in People's Park once a week, I don't think many of us would 
care that much," says Sabet, who helped found Smart Approaches to 
Marijuana, which opposes legalization. "It's really about creating a 
new industry that's going to target kids and target minorities and 
our vulnerable populations just like our legal industries do today." 
So how bad, or good, is pot? J. Michael Bostwick, a psychiatrist at 
the Mayo Clinic, set out to sort through more than 100 sometimes 
conflicting studies after his teenage son became addicted to pot. 
Bostwick turned his findings into a 22-page article for Mayo Clinic 
Proceedings in 2012.

For all of the talk that smoking pot is no big deal, he determined 
that "it was a very big deal. There were addiction issues. There were 
psychosis issues."

While a large body of literature suggests that pot could have very 
valuable pharmaceutical applications, the National Institute on Drug 
Abuse says research is ongoing.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 
worries that legalizing pot will result in increased use by young 
people and impair their brain development.

"Think about it: Do you want a nation where your young people are 
stoned?" she asks.

Partisans on both sides think people in other states will keep a 
close eye on Colorado and Washington as they decide what happens next.

But past predictions on pot have been wildly off-base.

"Reefer Madness," the 1936 propaganda movie that pot fans turned into 
a cult classic in the 1970s, spins a tale of dire consequences 
"ending often in incurable insanity."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom