Marijuana legal reform has made great strides over the past few
years. Four states are now allowing their citizens to freely use
recreational marijuana. Washington D.C. -- the seat of the federal
government itself -- has joined Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington
state in fully legalizing marijuana. Almost half the states (23 of
them) have legalized medical use of marijuana, and an additional dozen
have allowed for heavily-restricted medical use of some form of the
plant or another. That adds up to over seventy percent of America. Yet
the federal laws have not budged an inch, and remain Draconian in their
condemnation of any use of marijuana.
Change will come to federal
law. That is almost assured, at this point. More and more states will
likely jump on the bandwagon of recreational legalization in the 2016
elections and beyond. Sooner or later, the federal position will have
to change. Three senators have just introduced legislation to do
precisely that, although the chances for this particular bill being
enacted are a long way from being assured. Whether it succeeds or not,
though, change will indeed come at some point, and when it does it may
look a lot like this bill.
The bill (S.683)
is serious in its scope. It would not make radical changes, and is in
fact rather incremental in nature. Even if enacted, future change would
likely become necessary at some point, but it would still represent a
good first step on the path toward dismantling the federal "War On Weed"
that has been raging for approximately a century now. At this point,
however, the incremental nature of the bill is actually encouraging,
because it could place the bill in the realm of the politically possible
(where a more-radical bill might fail).
For instance, a different bill
(H.1013)
was also just introduced, in the House, which is far more sweeping in
nature (it would essentially just hand marijuana off to the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), but it's not currently
getting as much attention because its chances of passage are likely
lower than the Senate bill's. To put it another way, the House bill
represents the end of the road for legal reform of marijuana laws, but
politicians aren't likely to vote for it before first taking a few
intermediate steps. Having all laws treat marijuana similarly to
alcohol is indeed the ultimate goal, but it's a pretty big leap to
expect all at once.
The last few years have seen a monumental
shift in the way the federal Justice Department sets its priorities when
it comes to marijuana. During the first few years of the Obama
administration, Attorney General Eric Holder vacillated on how fast to
revamp the War On Weed, sometimes taking a tentative step forward, and
sometimes taking a few big steps backwards. Since the president was
re-elected, however, Holder has pushed the justice system towards reform
in a much bigger way. This is to his credit,
and to Obama's credit. But these changes in priority are merely
departmental policy -- they could be reversed or otherwise undone by any
future president with a different set of priorities. To truly reform
the federal government's attitude requires encoding reform into federal
law.
Seen as a whole, the current federal attitude towards
marijuana can truly be described as "doublethink." There are so many
contradictions in the government's attitude that they are indeed hard to
accurately count. George Orwell famously defined his term:
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in
one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." Consider that
the federal government itself began providing legal joints to glaucoma
patients as medicine over three decades ago, but still
maintains that marijuana "has no currently accepted medical use in
treatment in the United States." Even though 35 states' laws now allow
it.
Consider that the last three presidents have admitted to using
marijuana recreationally, as well as plenty of other politicians now
involved in running the country. But a legal conviction for using
marijuana has meant since the "Just say no" 1980s that students are
declared ineligible for federal student aid. So much for rehabilitation
and making something of your life, eh? At least for those that get
caught (none of our past three presidents ever got caught, obviously, on
their long path to the White House).
Consider also that the
federal government maintains that marijuana cannot possibly be safe
medicine, because absolutely no proper studies exist showing its medical
effectiveness. At the same time, the federal government would
routinely deny permission to any scientist who wanted to perform a study
which didn't have the pre-ordained conclusion "marijuana is bad."
There are no studies showing marijuana can be good, but every study that
attempts to do so is denied.
Doublethink, or perhaps (to use another
literary reference) just a big Catch-22. The president's "drug czar"
cannot -- by law -- ever publicly even hint that the federal
government's position on marijuana is wrong. So much for science, and
for the First Amendment. But sometimes, with doublethink, you have to
forcibly impose it so it doesn't show any cracks in public. So the drug
czar sits before Congress and has to take the position that marijuana
is more dangerous than crystal meth -- which is not just doublethink,
but downright insane.
Federal law needs changing. Even now, with a
mostly-sympathetic attorney general, individual U.S. attorneys (federal
prosecutors) can with impunity wage an ever-harsher war not just on
businesses and individuals who are following their state's laws, but
also on everyone on the periphery of such business activities. This
includes threats to landlords who own property where marijuana
dispensaries operate. Threats to newspapers who print ads for doctors
who write medical marijuana prescriptions.
Threats to the doctors
themselves. Threats to banks who want to serve such customers as
marijuana businesses. Threats to sheriffs and other law enforcement
officers who have implemented commonsense regulations for state-legal
marijuana growers. The list of abuses is indeed a long one -- too long
to adequately cover here.
The federal government's tax code
currently treats marijuana businesses (the fastest-growing industry in
America right now, according to many) differently than any other
business legally operating. Marijuana businesses cannot -- like every
other business in the country routinely does -- write off their
operating costs on their federal taxes. They are taxed not on their
profit (revenues minus salaries paid, rent paid and all the other costs
of doing business), but on their total revenues. This makes no sense
whatsoever, but it's the current tax law.
A lot of marijuana laws
on the books are nothing more than hangovers from the most-fervent days
of the Drug War. During the Nancy Reagan years, Republicans routinely
painted Democrats as "soft on crime," as a political wedge. Democrats
responded by bending over backwards to prove that they were just as
fanatic drug warriors as the Republicans. The result was mandatory
minimum sentencing guidelines and a whole lot of other "we're so tough
on crime" legislation. The result was also an explosion in America's
prison population.
Senators Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and
Rand Paul have now introduced a bill to change the worst aspects of
federal marijuana doublethink. It would allow, for instance, doctors to
prescribe marijuana without fear of federal prosecution. It would
remove some of the federal roadblocks to scientific studies, and it
would make it easier to procure legal marijuana to use in those studies.
It would allow returning soldiers to legally be prescribed marijuana
to relieve post-traumatic stress disorder.
It would allow banks to
serve state-legal marijuana businesses so they wouldn't have to operate
on a cash-only basis. Most important of all, it would change the
federal designation of marijuana from "Schedule I" to "Schedule II" --
meaning official recognition that marijuana "has a currently accepted
medical use in treatment in the United States."
All of these
changes are long overdue. The bill S.683 would introduce some
much-needed sanity into federal marijuana laws. It would begin the
process of dismantling the long and completely futile federal War On
Weed.
What is interesting is that political support for these
changes might come from an unexpected direction. While Rand Paul is
pretty libertarian (the Libertarian Party has long advocated
liberalizing drug laws), other Republican presidential candidates have
expressed some support as well (since it fits in with their concept of
"states' rights"). Democrats are the ones who may be following the
Republican lead on the issue, if they don't watch out. Right now, most
Democrats are, on marijuana, approximately where they were six years ago
on gay marriage -- they really don't want to talk about it,
for fear of losing voter support. This timidity is likely to be echoed
by the Democratic nominee in 2016, who may cautiously offer vague words
of support but likely won't seek to make it a prominent plank in his or
her platform.
The new Senate bill is very well thought out. It is
not merely a vehicle for legislative protest, doomed to failure. It
comprehensively changes the worst doublethink in the federal legal code,
and provides a way for the entire country to rationally move forward on
marijuana reform. Granted, even if enacted and signed into law,
further reforms will be necessary in the future. But it is a solid
first step on the right path.
Anyone interested in seeing
marijuana reform happen should right now be asking their own senators
why they aren't co-sponsors of this commonsense legislation. Call them
up, email them, go visit a town hall and publicly ask them to support
S.683. As seventy percent of the states have already shown, when the
people lead on marijuana reform, the leaders will eventually follow.
It's the only way we'll ever end the doublethink.
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