It is said that Mother Nature is no fool. She created the marijuana plant, just like she created the coca plant (cocaine) and opium poppy (morphine). But, then again, Mother Nature created tonsils.

On Nov. 6, 2012, the states of Colorado and Washington legalized the recreational use of marijuana, thus taking the great marijuana debate to another level. Prior to that, medicinal use was the discussion of the day. But make no mistake, the transition from medical to recreational was carefully orchestrated years ago by marijuana advocates. By that I mean the transition has come full circle. When marijuana proponents realized long ago that the country was not yet liberal enough to gain any traction on their bandwagon to legalize, they quickly adopted the medicinal angle, playing the humanity card with the notion that once medical use was accepted, then legislating recreational use was just a nine-iron away.

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State Sen. Constance Johnson has filed a bill to legalize marijuana in Oklahoma and place its regulation under the control of the state Health Department.

"I think with our current system of laws and punishments for simple possession, we are burying ourselves into a pit where the costs are unsustainable," said Johnson, who has made several unsuccessful past attempts to liberalize Oklahoma's marijuana laws.

Johnson said she believes unnecessarily harsh laws have ruined young people's lives, and that decriminalizing marijuana would reduce gang activity and violence.

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Mallory Johnson had lost count of how many times her daughter was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance or helicopter, her tiny body convulsed with seizures.

Desperate to find a treatment that would work for Zoey, Johnson's odyssey took her through a winding trail of doctors in Oklahoma, Texas and Arizona.

When Zoey was 3, Johnson learned her daughter had Dravet syndrome. The seizure disorder is so rare - striking about one in 40,000 children - that one doctor told her: "Google it."

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Smoking Marlboros is now forbidden in Irish bars in New York City. But buying, selling, and smoking marijuana is legal in Colorado.

It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. But where are we going? One certain result of the legalization of marijuana is that there are going to be more potheads, more dropouts, and more deaths on highways from those high or stoned - and more rehab centers.

Coloradans may relish the freedom they have voted for themselves. But the costs will be borne by society and the families of future victims of potheads behind the wheel.

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The costly, counterproductive war on drugs has turned the United States into incarceration nation. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, 716 of every 100,000 people in this country are locked up, by far the highest rate in the world, well ahead of such beacons of freedom as Rwanda, Cuba and Russia.

The arrest of Norman Gurley two weeks ago by the Ohio Highway Patrol perfectly illustrates the tyranny of the drug war and the threat it poses to the rights of law-abiding citizens. As reported by reason.com, Mr. Gurley was charged with having a secret compartment in his vehicle - even though the compartment was empty.

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Del City Police Capt. Randy Trent Harrison shot Dane Scott Jr. in the back March 14, 2012, after a high-speed chase that began when Harrison tried to pull over Scott's car

Harrison had previously arrested Scott on drug violations, and prosecutors said his pursuit of the teenager crossed the line from professional to personal. The defense portrayed Scott as a drug dealer and said Harrison believed that the teenager was reaching for a second weapon after the officer took one gun from him during a scuffle that followed the chase.

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Regarding Ronald Fraser's "Holder's wise choice on fighting marijuana" (Point of View, Oct. 19): The drug war is largely a war on marijuana. In 2011, there were 757,969 marijuana arrests in the United States, almost 90 percent for simple possession. At a time when state and local governments are laying off police, firefighters and teachers, this country continues to spend enormous public resources criminalizing Americans who prefer marijuana to martinis. The result is not lower rates of use.

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Regarding "Woman fights to change hemp laws" (News, Oct. 13): As a retired detective, I support the work and views of marijuana legalization activist Norma Sapp. I can attest to the reduction in public safety, as my colleagues spend large amounts of time chasing a green plant, while pedophiles in chat rooms aren't being arrested. As bad, or worse, teens in Oklahoma are shot and killed every year because of marijuana prohibition. How? Hundreds of teens in Oklahoma choose to sell marijuana - not alcohol, not cigarettes - and some will be shot and killed every year. We need to legalize/regulate and tax marijuana now.

Howard Wooldridge,

Dallas, Texas

Wooldridge is co-founder of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition).

[end]

It's A Losing Battle

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, commander in chief of Washington's failed war on drugs, recently issued what looks a lot like a domestic version of Vermont Sen. George Aiken's famous 1966 face-saving formula for exiting from America's lost war in Vietnam: Declare victory and get out. After more than 58,000 U.S. deaths, that's exactly what we did.

And now a timely American Civil Liberties Union report, titled "The War on Marijuana in Black and White," explains why Holder's similar announcement is especially good news for blacks nationwide and in Oklahoma.

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LITTLE AXE - Few Oklahomans could rival Norma Sapp's efforts to legalize marijuana.

She drove a motor home across the United States, serving as the support vehicle for a friend who was riding his one-eyed paint horse, Misty, across the country to raise awareness of a message: "Cops say legalize marijuana, ask me why."

She has walked the marble hallways of the state Capitol more times than she can remember to advocate for changes in Oklahoma's marijuana laws.

And she ran for a state House office in the 1990s - and quickly learned she didn't want it.

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Regarding Leonard Pitts' "Maybe nation is ready to end 'war'" (Commentary, Aug. 16): The drug war is part of the problem. Illegal drug users are reluctant to seek medical attention in the event of an overdose for fear of being charged with a crime. Attempting to save the life of a friend could result in a murder charge. Overzealous drug war enforcement results in preventable deaths. Rehabilitation also is confounded. I think it's safe to say that turnout at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings would be rather low if alcoholism were a crime pursued with zero tolerance zeal. Eliminating the penalties associated with illicit drug use would encourage the type of honest discussion necessary to facilitate rehabilitation and save lives.

Robert Sharpe, Arlington, Va.

Sharpe is a policy analyst at Common Sense for Drug Policy, in Washington, D.C.

[end]

It's been a war on justice, an assault on equal protection under the law.

And a war on families, removing millions of fathers from millions of homes.

And a war on money, spilling it like water.

And a war on people of color, targeting them with drone strike efficiency.

We never call it any of those things, though all of them fit. No, we call it the War on Drugs. It is a 42-year, trilliondollar disaster that has done nothing - underscore that: absolutely nothing - to stem the inexhaustible supply of, and insatiable demand for, illegal narcotics. In the process, it has rendered this "land of the free" the biggest jailer on Earth.

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IN his call to change the way mandatory-minimum sentences are used in federal drug cases, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said this: "We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate - not merely to convict, warehouse and forget." Oklahoma lawmakers should take heed.

Holder is taking a reasonable approach to try to alleviate overcrowding in the federal system. He wants to give judges more of a say in how long to incarcerate nonviolent offenders who commit drug-related crimes. Now, judges' discretion is limited by mandatory-minimum sentences that grew out of President Ronald Reagan's "war on drugs" in the 1980s.

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His Drug Task Force Took Money From Travelers on I-40 but Did Not Make Arrests.

HINTON - A district attorney is returning funds in three more cases where his drug task force took money from travelers on Interstate 40

Two of the three cases involved stops where money was seized but no one was arrested. A total of $21,227 is being returned in the three cases.

"I was really, really very scared," said Julius S. Crooks, 28, who is getting back $7,500 and a semi-automatic rifle.

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Oklahoma has taken a giant step backward with regard to marijuana. Thanks to a new law, starting this fall anybody who drives in Oklahoma within 30 days after consuming marijuana will be "driving under the influence" as a matter of law. One of the authors of this new law (House Bill 1441) was unaware that marijuana is a Schedule I drug and was therefore unaware of the consequences of his legislation. Nonetheless, I remain optimistic that marijuana will soon be legal in Oklahoma.

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Are Americans becoming more libertarian on cultural issues? I see evidence that they are, in poll findings and election results on three unrelated issues - marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage and gun rights.

Start with pot. Last November, voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana, by a 55-45 percent margin in Colorado and by 56-44 percent in Washington.

In contrast, California voters rejected legalization 53-47 percent in 2010. These results and poll data suggest a general movement toward legal marijuana.

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Tulsa attorney Sabah Khalaf advertises his opposition to marijuana laws on a brightly colored van that is decorated with pot leaves.

The yellow 1975 Volkswagen van, which has been parked in downtown Tulsa parking lots in recent weeks, acts as a rolling invitation for those accused of marijuana crimes to call Khalaf if they find their hobby has gotten them in trouble with the law.

However, it also acts as a sort of high-mileage political statement.

"I am not afraid to stand up for what I believe," he said.

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WHILE the debate over state efforts to nullify federal laws has often focused on Obamacare, both liberal and conservative individuals have promoted nullification.

The Pew Charitable Trusts notes 13 states are openly defying federal drug law by allowing medical marijuana, plus Colorado and Washington have legalized the drug for straight-up recreational use. So liberals who loudly decry Obamacare nullification efforts are silent on this front. Yet if attempts to nullify Obamacare through state action are illegitimate - or even racist, as liberal critics claim - isn't the same thing true of efforts to negate federal drug law?

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Editor, The Transcript:

Regarding your Feb. 27 editorial, while there have been studies showing that marijuana can shrink cancerous tumors, medical marijuana is essentially a palliative drug.

If a doctor recommends marijuana to a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy and it helps them feel better, then it's working.

In the end, medical marijuana is a quality of life decision best left to patients and their doctors. Drug warriors waging war on non-corporate drugs contend that organic marijuana is not an effective health intervention. Their prescribed intervention for medical marijuana patients is handcuffs, jail cells and criminal records. This heavy-handed approach suggests that drug warriors should not be dictating healthcare decisions.

It's long past time to let doctors decide what is right for their patients; sick patients should not be jailed for daring to seek relief from marijuana.

ROBERT SHARPE MPA policy analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy Washington, D.C.

[end]

Change, they say, is usually incremental. Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, has been trying for the past six years to get her colleagues in the Oklahoma legislature to at least hold a hearing on her medical marijuana bill.

That hearing finally came this week. The Senate Health and Human Services Committee defeated a proposal to legalize the medical use of marijuana.

The legislation would have allowed a qualified patient or designated caregiver to possess up to eight ounces of dried marijuana and 12 plants.

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