Pubdate: Mon, 22 Jul 2013
Source: Anchorage Daily News (AK)
Copyright: 2013 The Anchorage Daily News
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Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/18
Author: John Havelock
Note: This is the second of two columns by John Havelock on marijuana 
and the war on drugs.  Havelock is a former Alaska attorney general 
and, later, while director of University Legal Studies, directed the 
state's criminal code revision project.

A LITTLE WEED SHOULD BE PERMISSABLE

The War on Drugs has become such a standard part of American life 
that most of us are unaware that it has been growing steadily, 
sometimes dramatically, from its origins in 1914. The Prohibition Era 
came and went apparently without any of its lessons impacting the 
companion prohibition on drugs.

The occasional voices of reason from academe and from government 
sponsored studies by institutions like the Rand Corporation and even 
the federal Office of Drug Control Policy calling for a new direction 
have been largely ignored.

Relentless enforcement policy in the face of expanding failure can be 
traced in part to the opinion, held by many, that marijuana or other 
drug use is immoral.

Moral lapses justify criminal sanctions.

The problem, as with Prohibition, is that a larger part of the 
community does not share that view. Today, more people view drug 
abuse as a medical problem with medical answers.

A larger proportion of the public, about 75 percent, views the war on 
drugs as failing.

And marijuana? For a slight majority, marijuana use is a form of 
recreational pleasure, not as dangerous as alcohol or cigarettes and 
not everybody's "cup of tea," but still at least as enjoyable.

A little weed should be permissible.

A second reason failed policies continue is that the war has become 
economically and otherwise profitable to a complex of interests. 
Direct federal appropriations totaled more than $15 billion annually. 
Some of this money goes to state police, based on enhanced drug 
arrests, marijuana the easiest.

State costs exceeded the federal.

In 2005, 800,000 drug prosecutions meant $7 billion in funds to hire 
prosecutors. Total incarceration went from less than 300,000 in 1980 
to an eye-popping 2.3 million eight years later.

Marijuana arrests are approximately half of drug busts, and 82 
percent of the increase in arrests in the period through 2008. Though 
Alaska , assisted by a legislative bribery scandal, has escaped much 
of the growth in the private industry, police, prosecution and 
judicial resources have been diverted from other responsibilities and 
Corrections is the fasted growing state department.

Money is the least of the problems with drug policy.

Taking discretion away from judges with mandatory minimums sentences 
was madness and a big contributor to increased imprisonment. As 
reported in the UAA Justice Forum, as rates of incarceration have 
soared, difficulties in reentry have multiplied, with consequences 
such as expanded destruction of family structure, unemployment and 
creation of a permanent underclass.

Then there are the racial impacts, an issue alive notwithstanding the 
US Supreme Court's apparent view that racial discrimination by states 
is over. Nationwide, thirteen times as many blacks go to jail on drug 
charges as whites, even though consumption is roughly equivalent. One 
out of nine black children has a parent in prison.

Felony arrest is a convenient way to limit minority voting too.

Most of us are already familiar with this waste.

We simply are not doing anything about it. The war on marijuana is 
similar to the war in Vietnam. The drug war damaged or destroyed 
lives by the hundreds of thousands.

It sent American youth, still with a great potential for useful 
lives, to prison schools, guaranteeing the growth of an underground 
of lawlessness. Generation after generation, it made the police the 
enemy instead of the friend.

We will eventually end the war. Marijuana use was generational. The 
generations tolerant of marijuana use are slowly growing into the 
generation of political power.

The systems we use for controlling alcohol and cigarettes are much 
more sensible than the criminal justice system we use to control 
marijuana. Our prisons are overloaded with hundreds of thousands of 
Americans who lack any violent inclinations.

Alaska policy has wobbled, as indicated in UAA Professor Brandeis's 
recent article in the Alaska Law Review. Signature gatherers are now 
abroad seeking initiative relief from the present system.

The Legislature must assist in forging a new design.

Maybe, following Oregon and Colorado, Alaska will help get the 
country out of its rut.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom