Pubdate: Wed, 31 Dec 2014
Source: SF Weekly (CA)
Column: ChemTales
Copyright: 2014 Village Voice Media
Contact: http://www.sfweekly.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee?department=letters
Website: http://www.sfweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/812
Author: Chris Roberts

DRUG REFORM PROGRESSED IN 2014, EVERYWHERE EXCEPT HERE

In a year full of catastrophes and PR disasters, the country made 
strides in one area: solving its enduring drug problem in a less twisted way.

If not a full 12 steps towards healing, real progress was made almost 
everywhere: on sentencing reform, on how we understand "crackheads," 
and realizing just how intellectually bankrupt marijuana prohibition truly is.

Even seniors in Florida and lobbyist-owned members of Congress made 
historic strides on cannabis freedom: A majority of both voted in 
favor of easing America's war on weed, a move unthinkable just a few years ago.

Though in a perfect demonstration of how drug reform works, those 
"big steps forward" are mostly symbolic, with almost no immediate 
payout. Florida couldn't get the two-thirds majority it needed to 
legalize medical marijuana. And while Congress defunded Justice 
Department efforts to interfere with state-legal cannabis, marijuana 
is still a Schedule I drug. And in every state, there are still 
plenty of people doing prison time over a plant.

Meanwhile, California stayed the course. The state's barely regulated 
billion-dollar industry chugged along in 2014; efforts to tame the 
beast with sensible regulations or curb medical marijuana abuse with 
outright legalization crashed and burned.

But at least there's legal weed in Portland.

So while we did some learning and changing in 2014, California is 
still partially living in drug war paranoia-land.

CRACKHEADS AREN'T REAL, BUT FEAR OF THEM IS

In March, rock star researcher Dr. Carl Hart, a Columbia University 
neuroscientist, published a piece in The New York Times that 
attempted debunk one of society's uglier labels: crackhead. Crack is 
no more addictive than "regular" powder cocaine, and Hart's 
experiments with supposedly hopeless fiends - who, when offered a hit 
of crack or a small amount of cash, most often took the cash - 
suggests that drug use starts when the user lacks other opportunities 
(specifically, economic opportunity). Treating crack users more 
humanely is catching on, with the easing of Nancy Reagan-era laws 
that punish crack crimes more severely. But that hasn't been the case 
in San Francisco where Mayor Ed Lee's office squashed a plan to hand 
out free crack pipes - a potentially life-saving harm reduction model 
nearly identical to the well-established needle exchange program - 
before it was even fully discussed.

MARIJAUANA ARRESTS DOWN, FELONY BUSTS STEADY IN SF

Remember 1998, when Seinfeld was on TV, when there was no such thing 
as a tech bus, and when America arrested fewer than 700,000 people 
for marijuana crimes? Marijuana arrests dipped below that threshold 
for the first time since the Clinton years; in 2014, some 693,000 
people were busted for pot. Great. Not so great: Almost half of the 
arrests were for simple possession, according to the FBI. In 
California, where simple possession has been punishable with a 
citation since 2010, total arrests remained steady from 2013. Felony 
arrests, meanwhile remained the same in both the state and in San 
Francisco, where African-Americans comprise more than half of the 
busts, despite making up less than 6 percent of the city's population.

GOOD NEWS FOR DOPE FIENDS, BUT NOT FOR DOPE PEDDLERS

San Francisco's former police chief is now one of America's most 
liberal prosecutors. District Attorney George Gascon gave a TED talk 
in which he declared the drug war a failure, and backed up the talk 
by supporting sentencing reform measure Prop. 47, which voters 
approved in November. Moving forward, most drug possession crimes 
will be now be misdemeanors, not felonies, and anyone serving a 
prison term for simple possession could be eligible for release. 
That's good news, except for anyone caught in one of the San 
Francisco police department's legendary buy-busts, where an 
undercover cop asks a street addict for $20 worth of rock or pot. 
That's still a sales bust - and still a felony.

FEDS ARE MELLOWING OUT

Mission District pot club Shambhala Healing Center made cannabis 
history earlier this month, when the dispensary beat the federal 
Justice Department's effort to shut it down. That's the first Bay 
Area club to take on the feds in court and win. And with that, the 
crackdown that closed one-third of San Francisco's licensed and 
permitted medical marijuana dispensaries appears to finally be over.

BUT SAN FRANCISCO ISN'T MELLOWING OUT

That progress arrived just in time for San Francisco to decide it 
doesn't want any more pot clubs. The city's Planning Commission 
recently rejected a second location for popular dispensary SPARC 
despite the project meeting all city guidelines. The problem, 
according to a pack of Excelsior neighbors and a police captain, is 
that the neighborhood has three already. This "clustering" phenomenon 
is a result of the city's decade-old marijuana zoning laws, which 
leaves 90 percent of the city off-limits to pot. Dispensaries lucky 
enough to be the first on the block get a near-monopoly on the marijuana trade.

POLS TAKE HITS ON POT

In March, Gov. Jerry Brown answered a question about marijuana 
legalization with another question: "How many people can get stoned 
and still have a great state?" Perhaps Attorney General Kamala 
Harris, who in November suggested that legalization is "inevitable," 
could allay Brown's fear of "potheads." Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Gavin 
Newsom is still the state's most vocal political friend of the 
cannabis plant. Another reminder that the lite gov has much less power.

COPS FOR POT (REGULATIONS)

And finally, the question of regulation. The state's powerful police 
lobby surprised us all early in the year when it said it would be 
amenable to a regulated cannabis industry. That's a sea change from 
just a year ago, when cops wanted no cannabis industry. But in the 
end, the result was the same: no agreement in the Legislature and no 
strong statewide regulation.

California still has vague rules saying who can do what with the 
cannabis plant, as well as a patchwork of conflicting regulations 
among counties and cities; in Weed, voters in November approved bans 
on marijuana cultivation and dispensaries.

So what if Oregon and Alaska legalized marijuana, there's still no 
legal weed in Weed.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom