cannabisnews.com: Marijuana Movement Rolls Into The Mainstream
Marijuana Movement Rolls Into The Mainstream
Posted by CN Staff on November 17, 2002 at 07:41:59 PT
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff
Source: Boston Globe
One is a retired judge who says he has never smoked marijuana in his life. Another is an economist who says he last touched the drug decades ago, in college, and didn't like it. Yet another is a lawyer who acknowledges that he ''absolutely'' smokes pot. James W. Dolan, Jeffrey Miron, and Michael Cutler are the white-collar public face of the Drug Policy Forum of Massachusetts, a newly formed group that helped put a nonbinding initiative to decriminalize marijuana on the ballot in 19 legislative districts across the state.
The initiative, which proposed making possession of a small amount of marijuana a civil offense - punishable by a $100 fine similar to a parking ticket - passed everywhere it appeared on the ballot, including nine districts in Greater Boston. Bolstered by a Boston University study that calculated the state could save $24 million if the initiative were enacted, the measure passed with roughly 70 percent approval of voters in four districts that include parts of Brookline, Jamaica Plain, and Roslindale. ''This vote shows that these attitudes are mainstream,'' said Cutler, interim director of the Drug Policy Forum, which commissioned the BU study. Now the group hopes to work like a think tank, not a grass-roots coalition. Its members strive for a board of directors filled with professors, not potheads. While their friends who put on the annual Freedom Rally focus on the right to smoke, the Drug Policy Forum champions fiscal savings. Antidrug activists say they've noticed that the marijuana movement has gotten a makeover and has seen widespread success among mainstream voters, but they warn the public should still be wary. ''It's a very smart political move on the part of marijuana lobbyists,'' said Maria Cheevers, executive director of the Boston Coalition Against Drugs and Violence. ''The group that is coming at this from a professional perspective, arguing that this is saving money on the war on drugs, can sound much more credible than the old potheads' argument ... But it's a slippery slope. Before you know it, it's OK to sell marijuana in the stores, and the kids aren't showing up at school any more because they're stoned.'' For 13 years, the flag-bearer of the movement to reform marijuana laws was the annual Freedom Rally, put on by the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition. But some argue that the rally's thousands of stoned youths in ripped jeans hurt the cause more than helped it. In 1998, a Globe article called the rally's participants 1960s ''throwbacks.'' In 1999, a Herald editorial called them ''burned-out relics.'' Perhaps the height of negative publicity came when the coalition's president, Bill Dowling, was arrested for donning a pig's snout and oinking at undercover police. ''I think the public gets alarmed by people who show up at the rallies and flout the law,'' said Dolan. ''The rally doesn't do much to change people's minds on the issue. It may have to some degree the opposite effect.'' Two years ago, a group of coalition volunteers diverted their efforts from the rally to a signature-collecting push to put decriminalization on the ballot in three legislative districts. Decriminalization, they argued, would not change much: While those found guilty of possessing marijuana can face up to six months in jail, the vast majority of cases only result in a fine. Changing the law - which 13 states have already done - would be more efficient and would not risk a young offender's access to jobs and student loans, activists argue. Critics counter that it would send the wrong message to teenagers and could bring a dramatic increase in drug use. But in 2000, the measures passed in all three districts, including the communities of Somerville, Framingham, and Ipswich. That victory prompted 180-degree policy shifts among some lawmakers. State Senator Charles Shannon, a former police officer, sponsored a bill on Beacon Hill that he would have once vehemently opposed. ''My constituents told me in overwhelming numbers that they support the decriminalization of less than an ounce of marijuana,'' Shannon, a Democrat from Somerville, told the Criminal Justice Committee in March 2001. ''Current law dictates that people who use marijuana on a purely personal basis be classified as criminals. In the case of first-time offenders, we are forcing them to relive their past mistakes every time they apply for a job or every time they apply for a student loan,'' he said. Emboldened by their legislative successes, some Cannabis Reform Coalition activists formed the Drug Policy Forum, which they hoped would lobby for change in all drug policy. ''There's a bunch of us who ... thought that there needed to be another face, besides what appeared at the Freedom Rally,'' said Cutler, 53, who once helped organize the event. While the coalition's members are known for eating hemp cereal, reading the magazine High Times, and socializing with subgroups like Jamaica Plain's ''Grannies for Ganja,'' the Drug Policy Forum has sought support from academics and conservative think tanks. And while the coalition survives off grass-roots membership dues, works out of members' homes, and is barred by law from certain political activities, the Drug Policy Forum has already received grant money, laid groundwork for opening a full-time office, and commissioned Miron, a BU economist, to study how much minor marijuana offenses cost the state. The forum also scored a major victory by recruiting Dolan as an adviser. Years ago, Cutler was a young lawyer defending a marijuana smoker and Dolan was the presiding judge who refused to dismiss the case. But after years of presiding over drug-related homicide trials in Dorchester, Dolan decided drug offenses should be treated as a public health problem, not crimes. He helped found the state's drug courts, which offer alternative sentences for addicts. ''I was a judge when all of the motor-vehicle offenses were criminal matters - speeding, red lights,'' Dolan said, adding it is ''just a matter of time'' before marijuana possession is also decriminalized. David Rosenbloom, a longtime critic of the marijuana movement who heads Join Together, a drug prevention group, acknowledges that the activists' new tactics are starting to tap into the concerns of mainstream society by emphasizing cost savings and treatment. Still, Rosenbloom wondered how new the Drug Policy Forum really is. ''Is that a new organization or just a new name?'' he asked. ''I suspect it's many of the same people who have been working on this issue over the years.'' That's a question that even the activists themselves have yet to answer. Both the Cannabis Reform Coalition and the Drug Policy Forum sent out news releases over this year's ballot success, praising the teamwork that led to victory. But privately, Dowling grumbles that the forum did not do as much work as the coalition. ''They started late in the game and provided some paid signature-gatherers, whose signatures were frankly not nearly as quality as the ones our volunteers collected,'' he said. Still, in this movement, there's no place for rivalry. ''It may be the public's perception that MassCANN is a bunch of freaks and DPF is a strait-laced group, but that's not reality,'' Dowling said. ''Everybody that's involved in the Drug Policy Forum met through MassCANN ... We have always had more than one face.'' Globe correspondent Chris Tangney contributed to this report. This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 11/17/2002. Source: Boston Globe (MA)Author: Farah Stockman, Globe Staff, Globe CorrespondentPublished: November 17, 2002Copyright: 2002 Globe Newspaper CompanyContact: letter globe.comWebsite: http://www.boston.com/globe/Related Articles & Web Site:MassCannhttp://www.masscann.org/Voters Speak: It’s High Time For Decriminalization http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14735.shtmlSouth Shore Backs Decriminalizing Marijuana http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14689.shtmlVoters Send Messages on Pot, Finneran & Casinos http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14686.shtml
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Comment #3 posted by freedom fighter on November 18, 2002 at 22:05:18 PT
Grassroot Effort
I think is very important.. I think that Nevada's effort failed in that area. Does not do anyone any good to buy the votes to get a ballot in if no one' serious about it. Just my feelin that it is the main reason why the ballot did'nt pass. I'm glad Mass. passed the decriminaliztion ballot. ff
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Comment #2 posted by DdC on November 17, 2002 at 14:11:21 PT
Cannabis smoking 'more harmful' than tobacco(myth)
There are so many reasons why cannabis is so much safer than today's polluted tobacco. Here are the facts below... jtTobacco Harm Reduction. Versus Tobacco Prohibition. Additives and smoke. Tobacco, cannabis, marijuana. Death charts. Tobacco, marijuana, cannabis. Eliminate the polonium and the hundreds of synthetic additives in tobacco in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives a year in the USA, and millions yearly worldwide. Use vaporizers to eliminate smoke. Charts for leading causes of death. This page was last revised Saturday, November 16, 2002 01:25 AM -0500. This page is at
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/tobacco.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/tobacco.htm and
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/tobacco.htm *Radioactive Polonium in Tobacco. "between 1938 and 1960, the level of polonium 210 in American tobacco tripled commensurate with the increased use of chemical fertilizers and Persistant Organic Pollutant (POP) accumulation. ... The needless additional radiation delivered via fertilizer can be reduced through the use of alternative phosphate sources (19) or organic farming techniques (20). ... or merely switching to an organic brand of tobacco."
http://www.webspawner.com/users/radioactivethreat/index.html *US Government the World's Leading Drug Peddler. By Noam Chomsky.
"Just as the drug war was [re-]launched with great fanfare in September 1989, the US Trade Representative (USTR) panel held a hearing in Washington to consider a tobacco industry request that the US impose sanctions on Thailand in retaliation for its efforts to restrict US tobacco imports and advertising. Such US government actions had already rammed this lethal addictive narcotic down the throats of consumers in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, with human costs of the kind already indicated. The US Surgeon General, Everett Koop, testified at the USTR panel that 'when we are pleading with foreign governments to stop the flow of cocaine, it is the height of hypocrisy for the United States to export tobacco.' He added, 'years from now, our nation will look back on this application of free trade policy and find it scandalous.' Thai witnesses also protested, predicting that the consequence of US sanctions would be to reverse a decline in smoking achieved by their government's campaign against tobacco use."
http://deoxy.org/usdrugs.htm It was only on April 13, 1994, that the names of 599 of the allowed tobacco additives were released to the news media from the control of our own government! The following tobacco info may also help explain why cannabis has never been proven to have killed anybody in recorded history. Almost no one illegally growing cannabis feels the need to put additives into cannabis after it is grown. And unlike tobacco, cannabis is not physically addicting, and very little cannabis smoke is needed to sustain a cannabis high. One to four cannabis smoke inhalations for each 4 to 5 hour high is plenty for most users. Versus hundreds of tobacco smoke inhalations each and every day for the average addicted tobacco smoker. And since cannabis is not physically addicting, most cannabis users only use cannabis occasionally."The late Dr. Richard D. Passey of London's Chester Beatty Research Institute had spent twenty years investigating smoking and cancer. 'In Russia, China, Formosa, and other countries where cigarettes are made of air-dried tobacco [three months in a barn, allowing fermentation of sugars, and thus resulting in no sugar content] - close to the kind the American Indian used before the invention of sugar sauces [usually with many additives] - they are unable to find any correlation at all between smoking and lung cancer.' "From book: Sugar Blues. 1975. It gives references for the above info: Medical World News, January 14, 1972, and March 16, 1973.Of course, since that book came out, flue-cured (quick dried with heat, which leaves the tar-producing sugar content) American-type cigarettes, laden with added sugar and chemicals, are used in more and more places worldwide."Blended tobacco, water, high fructose corn syrup, glycerol, propylene glycol, sucrose, invert sugar, casing flavor, natural and artificial licorice flavor, menthol, artificial milk chocolate, natural chocolate flavor, artificial tobacco flavors, valerian root extract, molasses extract, vanilla extract, vanillin, isovaleric acid, cedarwood oil, phenylacetic acid, patchouli oil, hexanoic acid, vetiver oil, olibanum oil, 3-methylpentanoic acid, denatured ethanol"Cigarette ingredients listed by L&M. The New York Times 12/28/97."But Wigand, with his allegations that B&W manipulated nicotine levels in cigarettes, knowingly used a carcinogenic additive to make pipe tobacco taste better and covered up research into "safer" cigarettes, has begun talking to lawyers, grand juries and the media at an inopportune moment for tobacco." TIME Magazine, March 11, 1996.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archive/1996/dom/960311/tobacco.html"The removal of tobacco from the Pharmacopoeia was the price that had to be paid to get the support of tobacco state legislators for the Food and Drug Act of 1906. The elimination of the word tobacco automatically removed the leaf from FDA supervision"Smoking and Politics: Policymaking and the Federal Bureaucracy. Fritschler, A. Lee. 1969, p. 37. *Tobacco Quotes.
http://www.tobacco.org/Misc/9806quotesoftheday.html *9/98. US: Wire: Sick Smokers Cost US $73 Billion Per Year - Study.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n794.a05.html/all The PDFA (Partnership for a Drug-Free America), FDA, NIH, AMA, NCI, etc. do not warn against the hundreds of synthetic, carcinogenic, chemical additives allowed (but not listed) in tobacco. Harm Reduction. Getting rid of the tobacco additives would probably at least halve the 450,000 yearly U.S. tobacco deaths. At the very least, all the ingredients should be listed on the packaging, the same as is required for almost any other item ingested into the human body.In 1997 all Winston cigarettes were advertised as being 100% tobacco without any additives. They cannot legally make any health claims about it! This is insane. This is the power of the petrochemical pharmaceutical complex. American Spirit and other additive-free cigarette brands exist, too.Most people don't realize that cancer was not common until relatively recently. "There was hardly any cancer at all at the turn of this century, and there was no heart disease, except genetic. Today the cancer rate in the US is nearly one in two" (Healthy and Natural Journal, 1995, vol. 2, no. 2). "Today, cancer kills one of every five Americans" (book: Toxic Deception {TD}, 1996, page 7). The latest figures say that cancer kills one in four in the USA. So that means around 50% of those who get cancer in the USA will eventually die of cancer. "Today, according to the federal government, at least 70,000 chemicals are in commerce" (TD, page xvii). "In sum, only a fraction of the 70,000 chemical compounds sold today have been examined for safety" (TD, page 12). On January 21, 1996 CNN reported an estimate of 554,740 lung cancer deaths that would occur in the US in 1996. CNN reported that lung cancer is the number one cancer killer in the US. Health authorities and the press should encourage the use of thermostat-controlled pipes and vaporizers to evaporate the nicotine, without burning the tobacco. No smoke! There may have been a brand of cigarettes for awhile that used a red-hot coal at the tip of the cigarette to send hot air through the tobacco, rather than sending a flame through the cigarette. In all these methods the smoker inhales the nicotine that evaporates, but doesn't inhale smoke.Prohibition attempts via cigarette taxes.According to a 1994 report from Lindquist Avey Macdonald Baskerville Inc., "Huge tax increases in
Canada ignited cigarette smuggling, resulting in almost one out of every three cigarettes smoked in 1993 being contraband. Organized criminals reaped handsome profits. The legal retailing and distribution systems were badly affected. Faced with increased lawlessness and heavy federal tax losses, Canadian federal and provincial governments announced massive tax cuts on cigarettes in early 1994. Smuggling declined significantly afterwards."According to the same 1994 report the US federal tax per pack of 20 cigarettes was 24 cents effective January 1, 1993. State taxes as of July 1 1994 varied from 3 cents per pack in Kentucky up to 75 cents in Michigan. The 1994 report says that "A variety of indicators suggest that in 1992 up to 2.5 percent of total cigarette consumption in the United States may have comprised cigarettes that evaded federal taxes. ... Police in Hong Kong report that up to 40 percent of all cigarettes smoked in the British colony are contraband. According to Don Watson, the Commissioner of Customs, the impetus appears to be a 100 percent increase in the tobacco tax in 1991."Question: Do you think that cigarettes should be illegal?
Ralph Nader: No. You never prohibit an addiction because what you do is you drive it underground and a huge black market occurs. What you do with an addiction is expose the addicters to massive information, protect them from deceptive advertising, protect the young from being sold such [things] as tobacco products. Keep the research up to make whatever tobacco is consumed less lethal in terms of nicotine and other levels and increasingly make it socially stigmatized so that people often will stop smoking or won't smoke, not because it's bad for their health, but because it's no longer the thing to do. When I was in college, non-smokers were on the defensive. The smokers would blow smoke derisively in non-smokers faces. You'd never see that today. --Source: David Frost interview Oct 21, 1994. HOW DANGEROUS IS MARIJUANA... IN COMPARISON TO OTHER SUBSTANCES? A CHART BELOW from the back cover of the March, 1995 edition of "The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp & the Marijuana Conspiracy," by Jack Herer. Quote begins:NUMBER OF AMERICAN DEATHS PER YEAR that result directly or primarily from the following selected causes nationwide, according to World Almanacs, Life Insurance Actuarial (death) Rates, and the last 20 years of U.S. Surgeon Generals' reports. (Figures are for 1994 from the federal government's Bureau of Mortality Statistics and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, et al.--the last complete year at the time of this writing). [Quote ends.]
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/charts3.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/charts3.htm http://www.jackherer.com/comparison.html and http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/charts3.htm ___ This CHART ABOVE is probably as accurate or inaccurate as anything the government has put out recently. No accurate statistics really exist, since it has been shown that "drug-related" deaths reported at emergency rooms and elsewhere are often only based on what people say they thought was in the pill, powder, drug, herb, substance, drink, etc. that the deceased person may or may not have taken into their body. It is often inaccurate information, and the drug is often misrepresented, adulterated, incorrectly synthesized, etc.. The person may have died of something unrelated to drug use, but if drugs are mentioned by somebody, then the death may be reported as "drug-related." Several newspapers have exposed misrepresentation and fraud by government agencies concerning "drug-related" statistics. LEADING CAUSES OF DEATH in the USA in 1997 (unless year marked otherwise).
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/charts3.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/charts3.htm According to the Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Health Statistics, and the Journal of American Medical Association (for adverse drug reactions death numbers; April 14, 1998 issue of JAMA; 279:1200-1205, 1998).
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n273/a04.html
and
http://www.cdc.gov/nchswww/fastats/homicide.htm and
http://www.cdc.gov/nchswww/fastats/deaths.htm and
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/charts3.htm
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n272/a03.html and
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n327/a07.html Cannabis Shrinks Tumors: Government Knew in 74
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n572/a11.html?1979 Organic Cannabis/Tobacco vs Chemical Cigarettes
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionwhyitstimetolegalize.showMessage?topicID=310.topic
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Comment #1 posted by goneposthole on November 17, 2002 at 08:29:04 PT
alcohol and tobacco
are public health problems resulting in the deaths of some 475,000 people each and every year. An ongoing holocaust totally ignored.While ONDCP commercials tout cannabis as a killer drug in all kinds of ways, alcohol and tobacco have been given a green light. It must be repeated over and over again, cannabis does not kill anybody.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Oh, the beautiful red-haired madonna with childSat on the curb, wearing a smileShe doubled the yearsAnd trebled the milesShe comforts the babe with the softest of smiles"The Beautiful Red-haired Madonna with Child"-by Guy Clark------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Bring me peace when there's talk of war;When it's hard to find.Bring me peace when there's talk of war;Peace is on my mind."
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