Weed Takes Root
http://www.houstonpress.com/2010-01-07/news/weed-takes-root
Marijuana's steady creep toward legalization nationwide.
By David Ferrell
January 05, 2010
These are not your run-of-the-mill potheads jammed into the long,
narrow classroom at Oaksterdam University, a tiny campus in downtown
Oakland, California, with no sign to betray its location on busy San
Vicente Boulevard south of the Beverly Center. A serious vibe fills
the loftlike space, where rows of desks are arranged like church pews
under exposed ducts. No one clowns around or even smiles much.
Instead, eyes fix intently on a screen at the front of the darkened room.
Projected there is a photograph of a healthy marijuana plant under an
array of lights. Tonight's subject, Cannabis 101: growing the weed in
indoor gardens. It's delicate alchemy, as most of these students, who
range in age from their early twenties to nearly 60, already know.
During the 13-week semester, many tend and keep notes on their own
clandestine nurseries in bedrooms and garages scattered around Los
Angeles and the Bay Area.
Encouraged by instructors, and by the prospects of staking out
ground-floor positions in the emerging world of "cannabusinesses,"
they cultivate popular varieties of bud while experimenting with
soils, temperatures and light sources.
From the rear of the room, a baritone voice pipes up a student
remarking on the crystalline texture of the leaves when the plants
are raised under light-emitting diodes.
"With the LEDs, it just looks way frostier than anything under the
high-pressure sodium," he says.
Details get technical, as in any science class, but the larger lesson
is clear to see. Here, as in many other places across America, the
future of cannabis is being sown and, make no mistake, it is a
future high on promise.
Oaksterdam takes its name from a bastardization of Oakland, where the
university began, and pot-friendly Amsterdam. Here, new growers and
dispensary operators are being trained like whole legions of Johnny
Appleseeds, soon to spread pot's blessings from one coastline to the
other. Not that anywhere is truly virgin ground, but consider: The
pro-marijuana movement has never had an army so large, politically
sophisticated and well funded, even if supporters downplay the
millions that roll in. Nor has it enjoyed such a frenzied period of
media exposure, a startling amount of it positive.
Never has there been such a concerted thrust to legalize the drug
nationwide for medical purposes, for the plain old joy of getting
stoned and for a gold mine in profits to be reaped by those who
control the multipronged industry. Together with a rapidly shifting
public attitude toward pot and a White House willing to accept state
medical-marijuana laws, legalization seems as inevitable today as it
was unthinkable a generation ago.
"We're almost at a zeitgeist," says one of the high-profile lobbyists
who is making it happen, Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in
Washington, D.C.
Zeitgeist has become one of the buzzwords of the campaign meaning,
in context, a sort of coming together of favorable forces. St.
Pierre, who can call on advisory-board input from the likes of Willie
Nelson and Woody Harrelson, is a glib 44-year-old former altar boy
and preppy from Massachusetts who likes to wear a marijuana-leaf
lapel pin. He says this year NORML has seen an unprecedented
escalation of Web-page hits, podcast downloads, new memberships and
media calls.
"We monitor [newspaper] columns, and editors have swung in favor of
reform," he says. "I will go give a lecture in Des Moines, Iowa. The
questions people are asking come right out of watching Weeds on
Showtime. It's quite remarkable."
Badgering newspapers and television programs to pay attention to the
subject used to be one of the critical challenges for people like St.
Pierre. Getting a meaningful dialogue started was half the battle.
Now the buzz is self-sustaining, indicating a willingness of America,
as a whole, to engage the subject.
"The first time, nearly eight years ago, I attempted to pitch a
marijuana-related story to CNN, they literally laughed at me,"
remembers Bruce Mirken, a San Francisco-based spokesman for the
Marijuana Policy Project. "The person who answered the phone burst
out laughing. Now they're calling us. We've been on various
broadcasts and cable network shows 21 times this year at least a
couple on CNN. We've also been on the Today show, ABC World News,
really all over."
CNBC has run and rerun its recent documentary Marijuana, Inc.: Inside
America's Pot Industry, exposing the booming pot trade and the sordid
side of California's largest cash crop the shootings, thefts and
arson fires; the homes in Humboldt and Mendocino counties gutted to
make room for illegal indoor nurseries; and the secluded parcels of
national forest planted with pot by Mexican cartels intent on
cornering metropolitan markets like Los Angeles.
In September, Fortune magazine ran the headline "How Marijuana Became
Legal," as if the outcome of the fight were a fait accompli. "We're
referring to a cultural phenomenon that has been evolving for 15
years," observed author Roger Parloff, who suggested that the
critical, sea-changing climax might turn out to be a "policy reversal
that was quietly instituted [this year] by President Barack Obama."
Ah, Obama. Many attribute a good share of the present impetus to
Obama, the third president in a row to acknowledge smoking weed. Bill
Clinton famously claimed he never inhaled. George W. Bush fessed up
only after a private admission was secretly recorded and leaked to
ABC News. Obama won the everlasting affection of the pro-pot crowd
when he addressed the matter of inhaling and asked, "Isn't that the point?"
He also elicited joyous whoops when he jettisoned existing Bush-era
policy last fall and instructed Attorney General Eric Holder and the
vast federal antidrug apparatus to stand down in the protracted war
with states over medical marijuana. No longer would the private
holder of a medical-marijuana card have to fear being busted by
federal agents after picking up a supply of kush from the corner
dispensary. Nor would the dispensary owner have to worry about the feds.
For the marijuana lobby and its broader aims, the win was gigantic.
It removed for the current presidential term, at least the
daunting specter of federal interference and turned virtually the
entire continental United States into one big, wide-open game board.
Pot advocates divide that game board state by state, believing that
the surest way to overcome the conservative inertia that keeps pot
outlawed is to spread legalization keyed to states' rights to craft
their own statutes.
Medical marijuana has been on the move since 1996 and is now legal in
14 states, including California, with at least a dozen more to debate
it soon. Proponents predict it will continue to hopscotch from state
to state much the way legalized gambling expanded along the
Mississippi River and throughout a lot of the country in the 1980s and 1990s.
Texas does not figure to join the medical bandwagon anytime soon. St.
Pierre of NORML places the state in the top third for "harshest laws
and least viable reform movements," along with such states as Utah
and the Dakotas.
"Beer-drinking is a state pastime in Texas," he says. "But cannabis
is considered a deviant behavior."
The Texas Legislature has grappled with the issue of medical
marijuana for four sessions, but legislation has failed to gain much
traction because of the incendiary nature of the issue. These bills
would not have prevented law enforcement from arresting and
prosecuting those who possess pot, rather the legislation would have
provided users with an affirmative defense if they could prove they
possessed marijuana for a serious medical problem. For the last two
sessions, State Representative Elliott Naishtat, a Democrat from
Austin, has sponsored legislation that would have provided this
affirmative defense, if an accused could prove in court that he
possessed pot "for a bona fide medical condition like cancer, AIDS or
multiple sclerosis, and a doctor had recommended marijuana to help
ameliorate the symptoms of that debilitating condition," Naishtat
says. "Nothing would be legalized by the bill that I introduced." But
his bill died in committee in the 2007 and 2009 sessions, denied
public hearings by conservative committee chairs.
Naishtat plans on reintroducing the legislation in the 2011 session.
"I am much more optimistic about the bill in light of the Obama
administration's telling states who have adopted medical marijuana
laws that the Justice Department wouldn't prosecute users and
wouldn't use federal resources to enforce the federal laws on
marijuana in those states," he says. "That sends a signal that the
feds are willing to defer to the states with respect to authorizing
use of medicinal marijuana."
Naishtat says that his legislation is fairly benign, "the minimum you
could enact it's nothing like California, where they are trying to
legalize it." Although he acknowledges that some might feel his bill
would be a "major first step toward legalization," he maintains
that's not what his bill is about. "It's about helping sick people"
not about gaining acceptance for recreational use.
Attorney Sean T. McAllister might disagree. He led a successful
crusade this past fall to get small amounts of pot legalized less
than an ounce for private possession and use in the small
ski-resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado, in a vote that was largely
symbolic, given that possession remains a misdemeanor under Colorado
law. McAllister acknowledges that medicinal use of weed is a wedge to
help pro-pot activists gain leverage in advancing recreational use of
the drug. "Medical marijuana is really leading the way, letting us
see what a taxed and regulated market for marijuana would look like,"
McAllister says.
As Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance in
New York, put it, "The face of marijuana isn't some 17-year-old,
pimply-faced kid; it's an older person needing help."
The widening perception that cannabis is a godsend for sufferers of
cancer, AIDS, glaucoma and other afflictions has partially erased its
own entrenched stigmas, including a reputation for dulling the
intellect. To be sure, the purported benefits of marijuana so vital
to its broadening acceptance are not without controversy. One Web
site, CannabisCenters.com, boasts more than 240 maladies that respond
to marijuana, from writer's cramp to cystic fibrosis. For prostate
cancer, Huntington's disease, ulcerative colitis, lupus, grand mal
seizures, pot promises at least a whiff of relief.
But it's also a source of carcinogens. According to the federal
National Institutes of Health, "Marijuana smoke contains some of the
same, and sometimes even more, of the cancer-causing chemicals found
in tobacco smoke. Studies show that someone who smokes five joints
per day may be taking in as many cancer-causing chemicals as someone
who smokes a full pack of cigarettes every day." (On the other hand,
someone smoking five joints a day probably has bigger problems than
the risk of cancer.)
The multimillion-dollar pot lobby has used the drug's analgesic
properties to press a more challenging agenda: to remove the barriers
to recreational use, either through outright legalization or, at
minimum, decriminalization, which, in most cases, means that being
caught with less than an ounce is only a legal infraction comparable
to a parking ticket.
On maps where activists track their progress nationally, they can
already block out ten states among them, California, Colorado,
Massachusetts and New York where the first offense involving simple
possession no longer carries jail time.
Texas isn't one of them.
There was a brief burst of optimism in 2007 when a law was passed
allowing Texas police to issue tickets in lieu of arrests for
possession of four ounces of marijuana or less. That law remains on
the books. According to Houston-based reform activist Dean Becker,
outside of Dallas and Travis counties, the cuffs have been clicking
at their usual clip.
"There are only one or two district attorneys in the state that take
advantage of that," Becker says. "The rest of them think: 'We can't
not arrest these people. What if they go on a murderous rampage?
We'll be held responsible.'"
Becker, a reporter and host for Pacifica radio and the Drug Truth
Network, calls Houston "the leader of the jihad against drug users,"
citing, among other issues, its disproportionate arrest numbers. But
he says there is a very small spark of hope. New Harris County
District Attorney Pat Lykos, for instance, has embraced the ticketing
rule on the smallest possible scale. As of January 1, prosecutors
will no longer be able to file felony charges for drug possession of
less than a hundredth of a gram.
"That shows the willingness to at least examine the hypocrisy of drug
prohibition," he says.
For about a year, Becker visited Houston city council meetings once a
month to spend three minutes filling Mayor Bill White in on the evils
of marijuana prohibition.
"The best I ever got out of him was, 'Thank you, Mr. Becker,'" Becker
says. "They just don't want to talk about it. They still don't want
to talk about it."
Becker says incoming mayor Annise Parker could be better. So does
Steve Nolin, a past president of the Houston NORML chapter who
produces Houston MediaSource show Drugs, Crime and Politics. He
reached out to Parker and the other candidates during the recent
campaign and asked for their positions.
"None of them returned my inquiries," he said. Contacted by the
Press, a Parker spokeswoman said the new mayor had no comment for this article.
Nationally, the image makeover is but one of the important factors
now propelling the movement. Another: the violence and obscene
profits of the drug cartels. Those problems have given rise to the Al
Capone argument, that if you make it legal, criminal dealers can't
command exorbitant sums from customers desperate for a high cash
that would later be spent on bribes, machine guns and smuggling.
Licensed, fully vetted growers, operating just down the street, would
render the bloody drug kingpin as irrelevant as the Chicago bootlegger.
In the words of Mirken, "You don't need Al Capone to ship alcohol
when you have Anheuser-Busch."
_____________________
As with things in the United States, a good idea can become a great
one if it involves making money and doubly so if it generates new
forms of tax revenue. Thus at a time of housing foreclosures and bank
failures, when California's state government faces a whopping $21
billion projected budget deficit and the city of Los Angeles is
sinking under $983 million in red ink, licensing and taxing marijuana
suddenly make sense even to some who might have abhorred the idea.
Lawful growers and retailers could cough up, say, $50 an ounce in
taxes or fees and still charge less to consumers than the
$150-an-ounce prices common on the black market. Governments would
rake it in and also save a fantastic amount on arresting,
prosecuting and imprisoning pot offenders.
Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron, author of the 2004 book Drug War
Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition, makes a case that legalizing
all banned drugs would benefit taxpayers nationwide by $77 billion a
year, in both generating new tax income and eliminating the costs of
arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning offenders. Since marijuana
represents about a third of the illicit drug economy, legalizing pot
would make a difference of roughly $25 billion, he says.
Miron's estimate is generally in line with figures compiled by
pot-advocacy organizations, although getting firm numbers is
notoriously difficult given the vastly different ways in which
law-enforcement agencies catalog arrests and report marijuana data.
Jon Gettman, a former NORML president who operates a public data bank
at drugscience.org, claims that legalizing marijuana would enrich the
public by $42 billion a year. In breaking down that sum, Gettman puts
the current cost of legal enforcement at nearly $11 billion. He also
claims that federal, state and local governments lose out on $31
billion annually in taxes and charges that could be gleaned from the
massive industry, based on an overall estimate of a marijuana trade
that totals $113 billion a year.
Mirken, the Marijuana Policy Project spokesman, concedes that squishy
numbers invite attacks from critics. But he adds, "No doubt it's a
big hunk of money."
Watching that money flow to criminals and cartel bosses has added
impetus to the push for change.
Pro-marijuana forces, well financed and increasingly centralized in
New York and Washington, D.C., are often directly involved in helping
to craft reform legislation because of their deep knowledge about a
subject murky to many in power.
The New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, for example, employs 45
people and operates satellite offices in Washington, D.C., and in the
states of New Mexico and California. Its annual budget of $8 million
comes in part from George Soros's Open Policy Institute and also from
about 25,000 small donors and a number of very wealthy businessmen,
most notably tech guru John Gilmore of Cygnus Solutions, Peter B.
Lewis of Progressive Insurance, John Glen Sperling of the University
of Phoenix and George Zimmer of the Men's Wearhouse.
Nadelmann, the 52-year-old DPA top executive, says he spends about
half of his time on the road, engaging in debates, giving speeches
and conferring with pot advocates to draft voter initiatives and to
map out strategies.
Close contact with local groups enables him to marshal resources
where they are needed and also to bring hot spots to nationwide media
attention. Nadelmann can rattle off lists of issues and locales the
drive that brought medical pot this year to Maine, the statewide
decriminalization approved in Massachusetts, the ballot tussles ahead
in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. He claims significant credit for
Proposition 215, California's landmark 1996 state ballot measure that
authorized medical cannabis.
"The 215 campaign was being run by local activists," Nadelmann says.
"I got involved, put together major funders and campaign managers,
and turned it into a professional campaign and won that thing."
During a recent stretch, Nadelmann was flying from Santa Barbara to
Houston, then to San Diego, then back to New York, then returning to
Los Angeles all to preach pot, all in a span of a few weeks.
As advocates step up the pressure, public opinions are shifting. The
Gallup Poll showed 23 percent support for legalization in 1983. This
year, the finding was 44 percent, with more than half of the voters
in California in favor.
The number of highly placed government officials and jurists who have
joined the public call for marijuana reform would have been hard to
imagine even a decade ago. One example is retired Orange County
Superior Court Judge James P. Gray, author of the 2001 book Why Our
Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It.
Gray argues that drug prohibitions are a "golden goose" for terrorist
organizations, a view that has gained traction with the public.
"We truly are seeing the most rapid gains in public support for
making marijuana legal that I've ever seen," Nadelmann says. "It
really feels like a new age."
In Nadelmann's view, the changing attitudes largely stem from the
efforts of the Drug Policy Alliance formed by a merger of two
smaller groups in 2000 and similar organizations, such as NORML and
the Marijuana Policy Project.
While activists know there may be a limited time to seize the chance
offered by today's market conditions and Obama's laissez-faire
policies, they are also buoyed by fundamental changes going on in
America. The biggest of these is irreversible the supplanting of
hard-line ideologues with baby boomers weaned on Woodstock and flower power.
"A whole generation didn't know the difference between heroin and
marijuana," Nadelmann says. "That generation is mostly dying off. [In
its place] are tens of millions of parents and middle-aged people who
smoked marijuana and didn't become drug addicts."
On the contrary, they now fill elected seats and boardrooms. Is it
any wonder the tide seems unstoppable?
"We're looking at a perfect storm here," says California Assemblyman
Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), who symbolizes that new type of
leader. A former stand-up comic, Ammiano spent part of the 1960s
among the hippies of Haight-Ashbury, grooving to the Grateful Dead.
Now 68, he is one of the most watched figures in the national
marijuana struggle for one compelling reason: Assembly Bill 390,
legislation he introduced in early 2009 that would make California
the first state in the nation to legalize and tax recreational pot.
Considered bold even among marijuana activists, Ammiano's measure
would remove cannabis from the state's banned-substances list, allow
private cultivation, levy fees and sales taxes and prohibit sales to
minors and driving under the influence. A state analysis projects
annual revenues of $1.4 billion, a number that critics claim is
inflated. That figure does not include the enormous amount of state
and federal income and business taxes that would be paid by growers,
retailers and their employees as part of a fully realized economic model.
According to the same state budget analysis, the value of today's
annual marijuana harvest in California is $13.8 billion, making weed
one of the state's biggest export crops. The value of the nation's
entire pot harvest is $35.8 billion, according to the analysis. Since
legalized medical cannabis is only a tiny fraction of the market and
the dispensaries typically operate as nonprofits, virtually no income
tax is collected. Indeed, income-tax projections have rarely played a
role in the debate over legalization, although that, too, appears to
be changing, especially in cash-strapped California.
"Our economic situation is egregious," says Ammiano, who plans to
begin conducting hearings this month. "I think people have begun to
take it seriously."
If Ammiano's bill fails and many think it's too much, too soon
pot advocates have a Plan B, a narrower statewide initiative expected
to reach the ballot next November. That measure would rewrite the
criminal drug laws to make an exception for small amounts of
marijuana. Its mastermind and chief bankroller is Richard Lee, the
47-year-old founder of Oaksterdam.
Lee, who opened his first campus in Oakland two years ago, says 6,000
people have taken his courses, which are organized into $250 weekend
seminars and $650 one-semester courses. At any given time, he says,
500 students are enrolled in classes at the three campuses: Los
Angeles, Sebastopol, an hour north of San Francisco, and Oakland,
where Lee just unveiled a three-story teaching facility.
The formidable flow of revenue helps Lee to finance further marijuana
reform. So far, he says, he has invested $1 million of his own money
in the initiative. Faced with a February deadline for submitting
433,000 signatures, he claims he has already gathered well over
600,000 and is still collecting more, just to be certain that enough are valid.
"The response has been overwhelming,"Lee says.
If Californians light up, the beacon will be visible from sea to
shining sea. Nadelmann says he consulted with both Ammiano and Lee on
the language of their proposals, and points out that California has
always been a bellwether of cultural change, especially when it comes to pot.
"Look what happened with [the passage of] Proposition 215," Nadelmann
says, referring to the 1996 medical-pot act. "We were able to go to
other states and get it on the ballot. It's not as if the dominoes
start falling, but people see that something's possible." Proposition
36, California's 2000 initiative to favor drug treatment over jail
time, was another example. "Once that passed, we started seeing
queries from probably half the states over the following few years,"
Nadelmann says.
Aftereffects continue to ripple. Support for both medicinal and
recreational pot use has grown demonstrably stronger throughout the
West especially in Oregon and Washington state. An estimated
200,000 revelers attended the annual "Hempfest" this past year in Seattle.
In otherwise conservative Colorado, advocates staged a massive
smokers' rally in Boulder, and voters are expected to weigh a
statewide legalization measure in the next few years.
Whether the "devil weed" will ever play in Peoria is open to debate,
but in October the Illinois Senate narrowly approved a
medical-marijuana bill, meaning it could become law in the next few
months, and pockets of support for pot have become evident in
Missouri and elsewhere in the heartland.
California's actions in 2010 may greatly influence the speed of those
campaigns.
_____________________
Reefer activists readily acknowledge that the quickening pace of
change raises risks of a backlash. Intense concern already centers on
the poorly regulated mess in Los Angeles, where a confused and
largely paralyzed City Council has allowed the proliferation of more
than 540 medical-marijuana dispensaries without regard to zoning or
other restrictions imposed elsewhere in California.
Law-enforcement was never amenable to legalizing pot, but the
situation in L.A. a black eye to reformers everywhere can only
galvanize the resistance.
John Lovell, a lobbyist for the 4,000-member California Peace
Officers' Association, fairly bristles when confronted with the
argument that pot should be made legal because it's no worse than
booze. "What good comes of it?" he asks. "Right now we have enormous
social and public-safety problems caused by alcohol abuse...[and] by
pharmaceuticals. What is the good of adding another mind-altering
substance? Look at all the highway fatalities. Why do we want to
create another lawful substance that will add exponentially to that?"
That line of thinking suggests that society today would be more sober
and safe if alcohol or pharmaceuticals were banned an argument U.S.
history, particularly the era of Prohibition, does not bear out.
Says Lovell, "I think everyone in law enforcement will take on this
fight. I think people concerned about the social consequences of drug
abuse will take on this fight. I think there will be a broad range of
opposition."
Out in the streets, the counterinsurgency is readily apparent.
Marijuana arrests are up in California, despite the rising public
tolerance. Activists theorize it is not just because more people are
smoking the drug.
A similar spike has occurred in New York, even though it was one of
the first states to decriminalize small stashes of marijuana, 34
years ago. In fact, if there is a world capital for cannabis busts,
it is New York City, where 40,000 people were arrested on pot charges
in the last year.
Queens College sociologist Harry G. Levine is an expert on drug-abuse
patterns, and co-editor, with Craig Reinarman, of 1997's Crack in
America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice.
"What we have in New York is what you could call an epidemic of
marijuana arrests," Levine says. "The No. 1 criminal offense in New
York City is marijuana possession."
How is that possible, when pot has long been decriminalized there?
Levine explored the question by interviewing veteran and retired
police officers, legal-aid attorneys and jailed smokers, producing a
scathing 100-page review of the NYPD. It became apparent, he says,
that police who have a vested interest in making as many arrests as
possible profit from pot, and often "trick" their suspects into
violating a specific law against openly displaying the weed in public.
"Technically, [police officers] are not allowed to go into people's
pockets," Levine says. "But they can lie to people. Lying to suspects
is considered good policing. They say...'We're going to have to
search you. If we find anything, it's going to be a mess for you...so
take it out and show it to us now.'" As intimidated young people
most of them ethnic minorities empty their pockets of a joint or a
nickel bag, they're charged with a misdemeanor.
Such busts are huge business for the police, Levine points out. Not
only do they sweep potential bad guys into the system, generating
vast databases of fingerprints and photographs, but the arrests also
beef up crime statistics. Departments in big cities and small towns
alike use the numbers to secure fortunes in federal funding. Street
cops have an angle too: They like to nab docile pot users easy to
find in poor pockets of town at the end of their patrol shifts,
when the extra hours filling out reports at the precinct house get
charged as overtime. In the jargon, the practice is known as "collars
for dollars."
New York's example suggests a system deeply invested in
criminalization, one that is unlikely to back down. When contacted by
L.A. Weekly for a response to Levine's assertions, an NYPD spokesman
demanded an e-mail query and hung up. Three were sent; none were answered.
Levine says his research has pointed to the same pattern in other
American cities. "Atlanta and Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh,
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago..." He rattles off a long list. "The
Southwest is really bad. Houston...San Antonio."
El Paso is another place where the ideological battle has flared
dramatically. With cartels committing 1,600 murders in a year's span
just across the border in Juárez, Mexico, El Paso City Councilman
Beto O'Rourke pushed a resolution last January calling for a
discussion on legalizing drugs to undercut the illegal market. "Mind
you, it was not to legalize anything, necessarily," says O'Rourke,
whose tenth-floor office overlooks the Rio Grande and the
impoverished Mexican metropolis beyond. "Basically, it was a way of
saying the current policy had failed; we need to put everything on
the table and have a dialogue."
The City Council approved the resolution without dissent, but it was
vetoed by Mayor John F. Cook. An irked O'Rourke tried to override the
veto, only to be strong-armed by U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes
(D-Texas), who phoned all eight council members to make sure the
matter was quashed. "You need to cut this out," Reyes said, as
O'Rourke remembers. "It's going to be tough to get [federal] money
for the community if you pass this."
Reyes, a tough law-enforcement man who spent 27 years in the U.S.
Border Patrol, might have handled it differently if the resolution
had only dealt with marijuana, rather than all drugs, says his press
deputy, Vincent Perez. As it was, the resolution was defeated and
drug deaths in Juárez have continued to climb.
"We're almost at 2,300 murders for this year," O'Rourke says.
NORML had a field day lambasting Reyes on its Web site. Much as in
New York, where Levine's research has drawn nationwide media
attention, the "intense blowback" over the failed resolution actually
achieved what O'Rourke termed a pyrrhic victory for the hard-liners
and a step forward for those willing to consider change. "All of a
sudden we had calls from all over the country," O'Rourke says.
The psychological war is one the marijuana movement can win and why
weed advocates will likely win, barring the unforeseen. It is not
quite a done deal, however, because the question of pot use, for
many, becomes a moral argument, and moral values are slow to change.
"People long for rules," says sociologist B.J. Gallagher, an author
and lecturer in Los Angeles. "Without them, the world would be
chaotic and unpredictable. We'd be having sex with each other's
spouses, we'd be stealing things...
"If we legalize pot, what next? Cocaine? Heroin? That's what people
are afraid of. It's not the pot, per se. It's the bigger issue: Where
do we draw the line? So they say, 'Let's not change the line.'"
But history shows that the line does change eventually. "When a
majority are saying, 'This does not make sense,' the line will
shift," Gallagher says. "We've seen it with [alcohol] prohibition,
slavery, women's rights. We're now seeing it with gay rights. Our
moral values change over time, despite the objection of people who
are terrified."
_____________________
A new class is in session at Oaksterdam, a how-to about opening and
running medical-marijuana dispensaries. Dark-haired, bespectacled
lecturer Don Duncan, a prominent pot man due to his lobbying efforts
at L.A. City Hall and his ownership of a busy outlet in West
Hollywood, warns a room of rapt students to be mindful of the rules.
After federal agents raided his business in 2007, Duncan says, the
state Board of Equalization slapped a lien on his house for
nonpayment of taxes.
"Don't mess with those guys," Duncan says. Pay your taxes. Pay your
rent on time. Don't drive a Bentley and take 'round-the-world
vacations if you're running a nonprofit collective.
"But if you earn a healthy salary because you work hard, that's
okay," Duncan says. "That's actually a very patriotic and American
way of life."
Next to speak is Robert A. Raich, a leading marijuana attorney most
remarkable for his halolike crown of white hair. Raich gets down to
the nitty-gritty of applying for business licenses. Medical marijuana
is still illegal in the eyes of the federal government, even if the
Obama administration is backing away from enforcement. So be creative
when you have to fill out forms describing what you plan to sell, Raich says.
"Let me give you some truthful euphemisms," offers Raich, who seems
to delight in presenting them: medicinal herbs, Chinese herbs, cut
flowers, dried flowers..."You don't want to lie to the government,"
he says cheerfully. "You just don't want to give them too much information."
.
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