Local governments, and changing attitudes on marijuana

By Joe Brown

The most controversial ballot issue of Election Day 2014 in Florida was a constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana. It failed — barely. It needed 60 percent approval of voters to be added to the Florida Constitution and got 58, meaning a majority of Floridians were for it.

I voted against it because I didn’t think it belonged in our constitution. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who debated the amendment’s sponsor, lawyer John Morgan, on the issue, agreed. On election night, however, Judd said: “We need the Florida Legislature to address this, and that’s what the people of Florida said tonight.”

I agreed, and I first got to thinking about that the last time I served on a jury. The defendant was accused of drug trafficking — four dime bags of marijuana. Half of the 25 people in the pool screamed in disbelief, with one asking, “You brought us all the way down here for this?”

The prosecuting attorney said she understood their feelings but that the defendant had broken a law that was on the books. And if any of us didn’t like the law, then we needed to write to our lawmakers and get it changed.

This month, the St. Petersburg City Council took a step in that direction on the local level when members voted to look into decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Around the same time, the Pinellas County Commission unanimously voted to discuss lowering the penalty for possessing a little pot.

Council member Karl Nurse, who made the proposal, said a countywide law would be most effective.

Whatever happens, it makes sense in this day and age to lower penalties for a drug more and more Americans see as a minor-league intoxicant.

Last year on Election Day, Alaska and Oregon, along with the District of Columbia, voted to legalize pot, joining the states of Colorado and Washington. Additionally, some polls have shown a majority of Americans support pot legalization.

During a debate with John Morgan just before last year’s election, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said: “This isn’t about medical use. This is about smokable marijuana, for recreational use, because people want to sit around Saturday night with the strobe lights going and Cheech and Chong playing and smoke their pot.”

I had a college roommate who was a heavy pot smoker like Gualtieri described, and he didn’t always wait until Saturday, and he wasn’t doing it for medical reasons. Many a night I would enter our dorm room and the scene he described was playing out, with John Coltrane on the record player instead of Cheech and Chong.

I often wonder how he managed to graduate in four years because he spent so much time trying to find someone who would sell him some weed. But even though he was breaking the law, I never considered him a criminal. The only person he was harming was himself, and it would have been a shame if he had been busted and acquired a record that might have affected his employment opportunities.

That was more than 40 years ago, and little has changed in the way we treat recreational marijuana users.

And for real heavy pot smokers, many of them celebrities, the stuff seems to be more accessible than ever.

So if not legalization, decriminalization seems to make sense.

According to Tampa Tribune writer Steven Girardi, other Florida cities and counties have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, including Miami-Dade. And as St. Pete council member Darden Rice stressed, it’s about justice and fairness, not to encourage pot smoking.

“I don’t want to send the message that smoking marijuana is a harmless recreational activity,” said Rice, especially for young people. At the same time, however, being in possession of a little weed shouldn’t “affect the trajectory of the rest of your life.”

And because the Legislature doesn’t seem to want to address the issue, it’s good to see local governments take action.