Pubdate: Mon, 17 Feb 2014
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2014 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Gene Johnson, The Associated Press
Page: A1

U.S. POLICIES FUEL GLOBAL PUSH TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

In a former colonial mansion in Jamaica, politicians huddle to discuss
trying to ease marijuana laws in the land of the late reggae musician
and cannabis evangelist Bob Marley. In Morocco, one of the world's top
producers of the concentrated pot known as hashish, two leading
political parties want to legalize its cultivation, at least for
medical and industrial use.

And in Mexico City, the vast metropolis of a country ravaged by
horrific cartel bloodshed, lawmakers have proposed a new plan to let
stores sell the drug.

>From the Americas to Europe to North Africa and beyond, the
marijuana-legalization movement is gaining unprecedented traction - a
nod to successful efforts in Colorado, Washington state and the small
South American nation of Uruguay, which in December became the first
country to approve nationwide pot legalization.

Leaders long weary of the drug war's violence and futility have been
emboldened by changes in U.S. policy, even in the face of opposition
from their own conservative populations. Some are eager to try an
approach that focuses on public health instead of prohibition, and
some see a potentially lucrative industry in cannabis regulation.

"A number of countries are saying, 'We've been curious about this, but
we didn't think we could go this route,' " said Sam Kamin, a
University of Denver law professor who helped write Colorado's
marijuana regulations. "It's harder for the U.S. to look at other
countries and say, 'You can't legalize, you can't decriminalize,'
because it's going on here."

That's largely because the White House is more open to drug-war
alternatives.

President Obama recently told The New Yorker magazine that he
considers marijuana less dangerous to consumers than alcohol, and he
said it's important that the legalization experiments in Washington
and Colorado go forward, especially because blacks are arrested for
the drug at a greater rate than whites, despite similar levels of use.

His administration also has criticized U.S. drug-war-driven
incarceration rates and announced that it will let banks do business
with licensed marijuana operations, which have largely been cash-only
because federal law forbids financial institutions from processing
pot-related transactions.

Such actions underscore how the official U.S. position has changed in
recent years. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it
wouldn't target medical marijuana patients. In August, the agency said
it wouldn't interfere with the laws in Colorado and Washington, which
regulate the growth and sale of taxed pot for recreational use.

Anxiety over U.S. reprisals has previously doused reform efforts in
Jamaica, including a 2001 attempt to approve private use of marijuana
by adults. Given America's evolution, "the discussion has changed,"
said Delano Seiveright, director of Ganja Law Reform Coalition Jamaica.

Last summer eight lawmakers, evenly split between the ruling People's
National Party and the opposition Jamaica Labor Party, met with Ethan
Nadelmann, head of the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, a
pro-legalization group based in New York, and local cannabis crusaders
at a luxury hotel in Kingston's financial district and discussed the
next steps, including trying to decriminalize pot possession.

Officials are concerned about the roughly 300 young men each week who
get criminal records for possessing small amounts of "ganja." Others
in the debt-shackled nation worry about losing out on tourism dollars:
For many, weed is synonymous with Marley's home country, where it has
long been used as a medicinal herb by families, including as a cold
remedy, and as a spiritual sacrament by Rastafarians.

Influential politicians are increasingly taking up the idea of
loosening pot restrictions. Jamaica's health minister recently said he
was "fully on board" with medical marijuana.

"The cooperation on this issue far outweighs what I've seen before,"
Seiveright said.

In Morocco, lawmakers have been inspired by laws in Washington,
Colorado and Uruguay to push forward their longstanding desire to
allow cannabis to be grown for medical and industrial uses. They say
such a law would help small farmers who survive on the crop but live
at the mercy of drug lords and police attempts to eradicate it.

"Security policies aren't solving the problem because it's an economic
and social issue," said Mehdi Bensaid, a legislator with the Party of
Authenticity and Modernity, a political party closely allied with the
country's king. "We think this crop can become an important economic
resource for Morocco and the citizens of this region."

In October, lawmakers from Uruguay, Mexico and Canada converged on
Colorado for a firsthand look at how that state's law is being
implemented. They toured a medical-marijuana dispensary and sniffed
bar-coded marijuana plants as the dispensary's owner gave a tour.

"Mexico has outlets like that, but guarded by armed men," Mexican
Congressman Rene Fujiwara Montelongo said afterward.

There's no general push to legalize marijuana in Mexico, where tens of
thousands have died in cartel violence in recent years. But in liberal
Mexico City, legislators on Thursday introduced a measure to let
stores sell up to 5 grams of pot. It's supported by the mayor but
could set up a fight with the conservative federal government.

"Rather than continue fighting a war that makes no sense, now we are
joining a cutting-edge process," said Jorge Castaneda, a former
Mexican foreign minister.

Opponents to legalization worry that pot could become heavily
commercialized or that increased access will increase youth use. They
say the other side's political victories have reawakened their cause.

"There's been a real hunger from people abroad to find out how we got
ourselves into this mess in the first place and how to avoid it," said
Kevin Sabet of Project Smart Approaches to Marijuana.

A number of U.S. states are considering whether to try for
recreational laws. Voters in Alaska will have their say on a
legalization measure this summer. Oregon voters could also weigh in
this year, and in California, drug-reform groups are deciding whether
to push a ballot measure in 2014 or wait until 2016's presidential
election. Abroad, activists are pushing the issue before a United
Nations summit in 2016.

While some European countries, including Spain, Belgium and the Czech
Republic, have taken steps over the years to liberalize pot laws in
the face of international treaties that limit drug production to
medical and research purposes, the Netherlands, famous for its pot
"coffee shops," has started to pull back, calling on cities to close
shops near schools and ban sales to tourists.

There is, however, an effort afoot to legitimize the growing of
cannabis sold in the coffee shops. While it's been legal to sell pot,
it's not to grow it, so shops must turn to the black market for their
supply, which may wind up seized in a raid.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, where some countries have
decriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs, from cocaine to
marijuana, there is significant public opposition to further
legalization. But it is, nevertheless, on the table.

Current or former presidents in Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil
have called for a re-evaluation of or end to the drug war, a chorus
echoed by Argentina's drug czar, Juan Carlos Molina, a Roman Catholic
priest who has long served in the nation's drug-wasted slums.

Molina said he's following orders from President Cristina Fernandez to
change the government's focus from enforcing drug laws against young
people to getting them into treatment.

The pace of change has put U.S. legalization activists in heavy demand
at conferences in countries weighing their drug laws, including Chile,
Poland and the Netherlands. The advocates, including those who worked
on the efforts in Washington and Colorado, have advised foreign
lawmakers and activists on how to build campaigns.

Clara Musto, a spokeswoman for the Uruguayan campaign, said meeting
with the Americans helped her group see that it would need to promote
arguments beyond ensuring the liberty of cannabis users if it wanted
to increase public support. "They knew so much about how to lead," she
said.
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MAP posted-by: Matt