In 1937, at a time when modern Pharmacology was still in its infancy,
Congress- acting after less than two days of sketchy hearings- passed
the Marijuana Tax Act by voice vote. It was a ridiculous piece of
legislation that went nearly unnoticed at the time and then remained
obscure for nearly thirty years. It wasn't until aggressive use of
cannabis ("marijuana") by 'Baby Boomers' defiantly protesting the
Viet Nam War prompted newly-elected President Richard Nixon to
declare a second 'war' on drugs that growth of the present market
became sustained. His sudden new expansion of an old policy coincided
with several other developments in addition: the emergence of a series
of robust international criminal industries for cocaine, heroin, and
sundry other agents like the psychedelics, meth, crack, and a variety
of 'club' drugs, each with its own market, and all collectively
impacting domestic and global policies.
Considering only their domestic repercussions, criminal drug
industries have provoked huge federal, state, and local law enforcement
efforts to suppress them. For nearly four decades the support
lavished on the drug war by both political parties, all sitting
presidents, and every federal agency has been literally
unprecedented . Both the budget and influence of the two band new
agencies (DEA and NIDA), created to fight the drug war have grown
progressively; even as the Justice Department was devoting an ever
larger fraction of its resources to drug prosecutions and the Federal
Bureau of Prisons was expanding to house over 190, 000 inmates; over
half of whom (54%) are serving time for drug offenses. The record
federal expansion has been accompanied by a four-fold increase in state
and local prisoners, giving the US the dubious honor of becoming the
worlds' leading jailer, a lead we increase every month.
Yet the elephant in the national living room is that our lavishly
supported drug policy has never even met its own goals. The 'zero
tolerance' and 'drug free America' slogans of the Eighties were
quietly dropped in the Nineties for a more modest fifty percent
reduction in 'drug use' within a specified interval; only to see the
interval extended as it became clear the original reduction wouldn't be
achieved. Current emphasis has shifted to 'drug free' workplaces and
schools through use of yet another unproven strategy: aggressive random
drug testing.
Interestingly, that's a development which serves mainly to highlight
another weakness in a woeful policy: urine testing is best for
detecting marijuana. Just as the drug war was originally impelled
by youthful use of cannabis, its failure has always been underscored by
pot's continued popularity with adolescents; that many have remained
chronic users is supported by the steadily increasing number of annual
arrests and the relentless increase in seizures at our borders;
to say nothing of the numbers of plants being cultivated by
amateur growers in the nation's back yards, basements, garages and
closets. Then, there's the recent discovery of enormous 'grows' in our
national forests being being tended by Mexican aliens, clearly to
circumvent both border interception and land forfeiture.
All the above suggests that Congress has been enhancing punishments for
marijuana out of sheer frustration; yet 'pot' arrests are still treated
by the media as opportunities for word play and stale Cheech and Chong
humor. Along with the stubborn denial of policy failure at the federal
level, is the craven failure of non-government institutions to
come to grips with the enormous and indefensible injustice represented
by four decades of "marijuana" prohibition, a policy which, even as
this is written, is being enforced more aggressively than ever against
'medical' users in California. Nor are our scientific organizations
willing to criticize the obvious abrogation scientific principle by
government agencies in defending it. That news organizations were out
in front of 'science' in parsing the FDA's absurd April 20
communique on smoking pot is a telling case in point. Most
outrageous of all, at least to this writer, is that the campaign
against medical use in California is receiving passive assistance from
the self-appointed medical marijuana advocates who claim to speak for
'patients' and yet have completely failed to take advantage of the
opportunity Proposition 215 provided for studying them.
I have now been systematically interviewing chronic pot users for
nearly five years. What they have told me convinces me beyond any
doubt that NORML, ASA, MPP, and other medical marijuana supporters are
nearly as clueless as the feds; and equally susceptible to
doctrinaire thinking when it comes to adolescent drug initiation and
usage.
