Can We Talk About Marijuana and the War on Drugs For A Few Minutes?

As the 2016 starts to heat up, will Marijuana reform finally become an issue worth openly debating and discussing? That is yet to be seen, but it certainly should be. As more and more candidates have been asked questions about the legalization of Marijuana, 2016 may finally be the year when politicians start openly discussing alternatives.

I know there are many here who think the war on Marijuana is a secondary issue and not worthy of a national conversation, but there are others here who have very strong feelings about a 45 year old policy that has been nothing more than a monumental failure. I stand in the latter group and though I am by no means a single issue voter, the issue of Marijuana reform has been dear to me for more than 45 years. The draconian laws and enforcement have resulted in far more damage to our country than it has solved.
Let's take a look a some of the costs associated with this failed policy.

Monetary Costs

45 years after Richard Nixon declared War on Drugs, it is estimated that the United States has spent more than $1 trillion fighting the drug war. We now spend more than $51 billion annually on this failed war.

Arrests

According to the ACLU from 2001 through 2010, 8.2 million people were arrested for Marijuana, 88% of those were for simple possession of small amounts of marijuana. In 2012, more than 1.5 million people were arrested for drug crimes in the US, 48% of those were for Marijuana or one arrest for Marijuana every 42 seconds! Since the beginning of this failed war, more than 20 million Americans have been arrested for Marijuana violations.

Incarceration Rates

The United States has the largest prison population in the world. Although we make up a mere 5% of the worlds population, we incarcerate 25% of the worlds prisoners. Estimates put the number of people behind bars in the US at 2.4 million people. In federal prisons, slightly more than half of those prisoners are there for drug crimes. The War on Drugs has a racial bias that puts far more African Americans and Hispanics behind bars than it does whites. According to the NAACP  5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites. While African Americans represent 12% of drug users, they represent 38% of all drug arrests and 59% of those serving time in state prisons for drug offenses.

International Drug Cartels

As our country continued down the same failed path for more than 40 years, it bred a new type of international criminal, drug suppliers and drug smugglers. They brought with them violence and killings of who could and would control the drug trade. It was often an underground war where only the bodies gave any evidence a war existed. Those same battles and wars continue today, but they are far more out in the open now. America's War on Drugs continues to bring violence to places throughout the world. In Mexico alone, more than 100,000 people have been killed since 2006. Many of them in brazen daylight slaughters to prove who is the most powerful organization.

Gangs in the United States

According to the FBI major gangs all use violence to control neighborhoods and boost their illegal money-making activities, which include robbery, drug and gun trafficking, fraud, extortion, and prostitution rings. The Department of Justice points out that “Street gangs, outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs), and prison gangs are the primary distributors of illegal drugs on the streets of the United States.”

Asset Forfeiture Laws and Abuse

In 1984, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Crime Control Act which created the Department of Justice's Asset Forfeiture Program. Although originally intended to confiscate criminal proceeds from high level offenders such as drug organizations, the program has morphed into something far different. At the same time this program was enacted rules were changed allowing law enforcement agencies to share in the proceeds. Seizures of assets, cash, homes, vehicles, jewelry and other personal items are now shared with the full range of law enforcement agencies. From local police and sheriffs departments, to state agencies and the federal government, everyone gets a piece of the assets. 

These seizures of property have skyrocketed through the years as a direct result of the War on Drugs. Since law enforcement now gets to keep a portion of what they seize they have become incentivized to confiscate even more. The most disturbing part of these seizures is that no arrests have to made before they seize your property. Simple suspicion that somehow your property was obtained illegally or through some undocumented crime is all law enforcement needs to take your possessions. Is it any wonder the amount seized rises every year?
Drug War Facts reports that during the years 1989 through 2010 more than $12.6 billion in assets were seized.

Search and Seizure Laws, The Death of the 4th Amendment

If you ever wondered what impact the War on Drugs actually had on the 4th Amendment and the search and seizure laws, look no further than this paper produced by the Cato Institute, The Drug War on the Constitution. It not only details court case after court case where search and seizure laws were piece by piece destroyed, it flows right on to the asset forfeiture laws that are so abused today.

Transformation of Police from Solvers of Crimes to Identifiers of Crime

Before the War on Drugs, law enforcement was primary a solver a crimes. A crime was reported, the police investigated and searched for the perpetrator. Once found, he was arrested and brought to trial. Yes, law enforcement still identified traffic violations and took appropriate actions, but they weren't out everyday looking for crime. The War on Drugs changed that. With the sale of drugs being conducted by two consenting people, there was no crime reported. But the War on Drugs would never be won unless police became more aggressive and started conducting their own searches of homes, business, airline luggage, urine tests and more. Another excellent paper from the Cato Institute titled A Society Of Suspects: The War on Drugs and Civil Liberties details the changes in law enforcement and our loss of civil liberties as we went down that slippery slope towards a drug free America.

If you read no other links in this diary, please read the ones from the Cato Institute. They spell things out so clearly and will take you back through nostalgic ride through history and explain how we arrived where we are today.
On a More Personal Level

The Sentencing Project estimates that 5.8 million people nationally have lost their right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by those with felony convictions. Many of those 5.8 million are due to drug offenses. Because of this, 1 of every 13 African Americans are unable to vote. More than 2.7 million children under the age of 18 have a parent in prison or jail. two-thirds of those are in prison for non-violent offenses and many of those are non-violent drug offenses.
More than 200,000 students have lost their rights to financial aid due to drug convictions.
Despite more than 2200 deaths from alcohol overdose each year, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that you will not die from an overdose of Marijuana. There are no documented cases of anyone dying from an overdose of Marijuana.

Changing Attitudes

There are now 4 states, Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska that have legalized Marijuana for personal use. 23 states now allow the use of Marijuana for medical purposes. Despite these changes, our federal government, the FDA and particularly the DEA continues to keep Marijuana classified as a Scheduled I drug which is defined as...

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote.

Because of this classification, it makes it nearly impossible for universities and researchers to obtain Marijuana for clinical testing and further research. According to Gallup, 51% of Americans believe Marijuana should be legalized. Among Democrats, that percentage is 64%. Conservatives supporting legalization stands at 39%.

Lost Revenues and Opportunities

Colorado was the first in the nation to fully legalize Marijuana for recreational use. The results of this first experiment are very positive. The State of Colorado received $44 million in tax revenue from the sale of recreational Marijuana in 2014. Revenues are expected to increase in 2015. Washington State has done even better. They report $65 million in revenue and expect that to increase next year. 

It is estimated by some that if Marijuana was legalized in all 50 states, tax revenuecould exceed $3 billion per year. While $3 billion isn't going to make much of a dent in the Federal budget it could go along way in providing additional revenue for schools or other projects at a state level. And of course this doesn't include the savings that would be recognized by the reduction of law enforcement expenses.

Despite the fact that the US imported $580 million worth of industrial hemp in 2013, farming of industrial hemp is still illegal here and will remain illegal until Marijuana is removed from it's Schedule I classification, or Congress makes an exemption to separate cannabis hemp from the laws that currently apply to it's sister species. We are missing the opportunity to create jobs and entirely new industry in our country. And yet we still use and need the product but have to import it from other countries. Currently, most of that comes from Canada. We could be growing it ourselves.

Isn't it time we try a different approach? Could 2016 finally be the election year when we finally get that open discussion on whether the money spent and the lives destroyed are really worth the cost? Follow me over the fold and lets take a look at our candidates positions on Marijuana and drug reform.

Hillary Clinton
Back in 2008 Hillary Clinton was adamantly opposed to the decriminalization of Marijuana but since then her stance has softened. In a 2014 interview with CNN she had this to say about the Marijuana issue:

Earlier this year, during a town hall with CNN, she told Christiane Amanpour that she wants to "wait and see" how legalization goes in the states before making it a national decision. At the same event, she cast some doubt on medical marijuana by questioning the amount of research done into the issue. Later in the year, Clinton labeled marijuana a "gateway drug" where there "can't be a total absence of law enforcement."
"I'm a big believer in acquiring evidence, and I think we should see what kind of results we get, both from medical marijuana and from recreational marijuana, before we make any far-reaching conclusions," Clinton told KPCC in July. "We need more studies. We need more evidence. And then we can proceed."

Although she has moved slightly on the issue, I'm not at all comfortable with this position. I'm particularly concerned with her referring to marijuana as a “gateway drug” and absence of law enforcement. To me, it sounds like the status quo, or something very close to it, is fine until we get “more evidence”. I find myself wondering how much more evidence we need. It seems to me that 45 years of throwing people in jail, with nothing positive to see from it, is all the evidence we need to make a decision. I don't see that decision coming anytime soon. I would feel much differently if she made a statement that when she takes office she will immediately take the steps necessary to remove marijuana from the Schedule I list of drugs and request Congress allocate money for the research she says we still need. Unfortunately, there isn't going to be much research into marijuana, at least not in the US, as long as it remains classified as a Schedule I drug.
Bernie Sanders
As far back as 1972, in a letter Sanders sent to a local newspaper he wrote:

Let's abolish all laws which attempt to impose a particular brand of morality or “right” on people. Let's abolish all laws dealing with abortion, drugs, sexual behavior(adultery, homosexuality, etc.)

A lot has changed since 1972 and from the perspective of the debate on marijuana, the people have a come a long way, but our politicians haven't budged. In a more recent, June 2015 article, The Denver Post says Sanders plans to make Marijuana an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign and is looking to Colorado for guidance.

...the Democratic candidate said he supports the legalization of medical marijuana and his home state’s effort to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Sanders said he wanted to learn more about Colorado’s legalization of recreational pot before he talks about what he wants to see happen at the national level.
“It’s something that we are going to look at,” he said. “In fact, I do want to talk to some people tonight and tomorrow to get a sense of what is going on in Colorado. We will be talking about this issue.”

During a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” type interview he had little more to say:

"Colorado has led the effort toward legalizing marijuana and I'm going to watch very closely to see the pluses and minuses of what they have done, I will have more to say about this issue within the coming months."

The senator has been a vocal critic of the decades-old war on drugs, telling Time magazine in 2014 that he had "real concerns" about U.S. drug policy.

"We have been engaged in [the war on drugs] for decades now with a huge cost and the destruction of a whole lot of lives of people who were never involved in any violent activities."

It appears at this point that Sanders does not have a concrete proposal or policies regarding the War on Drugs and Marijuana. I was actually a little surprised that I couldn't find a recent, more definitive statement on these positions. But, based on his statements in the past and the fact that he is actively discussing the issue with people in Colorado, I expect he will soon bring forward a comprehensive plan as he has done with so many of his other positions. It looks like we'll have to wait a bit longer to see how those plans develop.
Martin O'Malley
In aJanuary 2014 article by the Washington Post  they reported O'Malley's position on marijuana thusly:

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley voiced strong opposition Wednesday to legalizing marijuana for recreational use, saying that it could be “a gateway to even more harmful behavior.” “I’m not much in favor of it,” O’Malley said during an annual "Annapolis Summit” radio show broadcast on the first day of Maryland’s legislative session.
“I’ve seen what drug addiction has done to the people of our state and the people of our city.”

Although having repeatedly stating that he opposes legalization of Marijuana, O'Malley very recently signed into law Maryland Senate Bill 364 which reduces the penalty for possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana from a criminal offense to a civil offense, punishable by a fine of $100 for a first offense. I'm not sure what to make of his conflicting positions here other than to say I doubt he will push for any substantial change were he to become president. At this point in time, I suspect it makes little difference as his chances of ever becoming president are unlikely at best.

Jim Webb
Although I doubt Jim Webb has any chance of becoming president, he does win my award for taking the most liberal approach to the issue of Marijuana and the War on Drugs.
In an article by the Huffington Post earlier this month they report that Jim Webb supports decriminalizing drug use:

Former Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), who on Thursday made his presidential ambitions official, suggested earlier this week that he supports decriminalizing drug use, a position that makes him the most progressive voice on drug policy among the current field of contenders. "Just as in mental health issues, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to put someone in jail when they have a disease, when they have an illness, a physical illness," Webb said Tuesday at the National Sheriffs' Association Conference in Baltimore. "There've got to be better ways for us to approach the issues of drug use in America."
Speaking before an audience of about 100 sheriffs, Webb also stressed the value of drug policies that prioritize harm reduction and education over enforcement and incarceration.
"We didn't make cigarettes illegal," said Webb. "We just got the information out there and educated people about the potential harm."

With little chance of becoming president, this probably doesn't mean much, but I'm sure Webb will want to discuss the issue and that in turn is going to force the other candidates to openly discuss and debate the “elephant in the room”.
The Republicans
With the exception of Rand Paul, who almost says he's for legalizing marijuana, the rest of the republican clowns fall into one of two categories. Those who are adamantly opposed include Trump, Jindal and Christie. The rest are quite content to let things play out in the states(you know how they feel about that states rights stuff) and have no plans of changing anything.
It really makes little difference as long as none of them come out with a strong pro-legalization stance.

They are not at all likely to be sitting in the White House come January of 2017. On the other hand, legalization is an important topic for younger voters and we want to make sure it's one of our Democratic candidates that leads that charge and energizes our younger voters.
Politicians have been able to tap dance their way out of ever taking a definitive issue on Marijuana, but it looks like 2016 is the going to be the year they can no longer stick their head in the sand.

I'm looking forward to the debates and, hoping beyond hope, that the candidate who wins our primary is willing to move forcefully to correct this 45 year old disaster.
I urge each of you, no matter your candidate of choice, to push that candidate to put a stop to the destruction of lives, the wasted money and resources and finally put an end to America's longest running war.