Pubdate: Wed, 30 Apr 2014
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2014 The Baltimore Sun Company
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Thomas F. Schaller
Page: 21

THE FUTURE IS GOING TO POT

Had somebody told me seven years ago when I started writing for The 
Sun that one day I would pen a column jointly praising Allan 
Kittleman and John Paul Stephens, I would have told her she was high.

But that's the funny thing about weed. , isn't it? It has the power 
to bring together otherwise different-minded people, including the 
55-year-old Republican state senator and the 94-year-old retired 
Supreme Court associate justice, each of whom helped advance the 
long-overdue cause of marijuana legalization.

Talking to NPR, Mr. Stevens said it's time for America to legalize 
marijuana use. He compared today's laws to the Prohibition Era of the 
1920s and early 1930s. "[T]here's a general consensus that 
[Prohibition] was not worth the cost," he said, adding that he 
believes "in time that will be the general consensus with respect to" 
marijuana.

The alcohol-marijuana analogy is imperfect. Booze was proscribed by 
national amendment, making its re-legalization more difficult. 
Conversely, marijuana consumption is presently illegal in most 
states, which could make de novo legalization difficult for the 
public to embrace.

Still, the analogy generally holds: A popular, regulated and taxed 
substance is banned, to the detriment of the citizenry which enriches 
criminals instead of funneling monies into public treasuries, while 
communities lose friends and family members to prison terms who might 
otherwise be contributing members of society.

A bill co-sponsored by Senator Kittleman and signed into law on April 
14 re-classified possession or use of less than 10 grams of marijuana 
from a criminal offense to a civil offense. This important advance 
made Maryland the15th state to decriminalize possession of small 
amounts of marijuana. Recently Colorado and Washington legalized use 
and sale by and to adults.

More than two dozen Maryland-based organizations joined forces to 
support passage of the new law. This polyglot alliance, known as the 
Marijuana Policy Coalition of Maryland, fused together state chapters 
of organizations with specific interest in drug policy (Marijuana 
Policy Project, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana 
Laws) with general civil liberties groups (ACLU, Libertarian Party) 
and race-based organizations particularly interested in the adverse 
sentencing impacts of drug laws on their communities (CASA, NAACP).

Their shared victory was not the triumph of a persistent, fringe 
element over the public will. A poll last conducted last fall by 
Public Policy Polling found that 68 percent of Marylanders support 
decriminalizing possession of marijuana in small amounts.

Marylanders' attitudes are consistent with changing attitudes across 
the country. According to the national Marijuana Policy Project, "the 
public is far ahead of most public officials on support for marijuana 
policy reform." For the first time in four decades, a majority of 
Americans polled by Pew Research support legalizing recreational 
marijuana use; larger majorities support medicinal consumption.

In theory, significant lags between political actions and public 
preferences should be rare in a democracy. But on issues including 
marriage equality and marijuana legalization, generational 
differences between citizens and elected officials can cause 
generation-based lags.

Older Americans are far less supportive than younger voters of 
reforming drug use and possession laws. Although support for 
legalizing marijuana is trending upward across all age groups, 
64percent of Americans ages18 to 29 support it - almost twice the 
rate (33 percent) of those 65 and older. Support among Americans ages 
30 to 64 falls in the middle at 54 percent.

Age differences wouldn't matter if national and state legislatures 
looked like the overall population. But elected officials are older, 
on average, than the citizens they represent.

According to the National Conference of State Legislators, 71 percent 
of state legislators nationwide are 50 or over. In the U.S. Congress, 
the mean age is 57 in the House and 62 in the Senate. But less than a 
third of the U.S. population is 50 or over.

So cheers to baby boomer Allan Kittleman and nonagenarian John Paul 
Stevens for siding with the future over the past.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom