cannabisnews.com: Regulation Increases Control Over Pot 





Regulation Increases Control Over Pot 
Posted by CN Staff on September 24, 2004 at 07:55:09 PT
By Robert Kampia
Source: Chicago Sun-Times 
Chicago Police Sgt. Tom Donegan has provoked a useful debate by suggesting that people possessing small amounts of marijuana should be fined rather than arrested and jailed. Donegan's idea is a useful step that doesn't go far enough.In fact, a strong factual and scientific case can be made that the best way to reduce the harm associated with marijuana is to junk our current policy of prohibition and replace it with a system of common-sense regulation.
That's not as radical an idea as it may seem. Such a system has been in place in the Netherlands for nearly three decades and is working well. In Alaska, where the courts have ruled that the state constitution gives citizens the right to possess small amounts of marijuana in their homes for personal use, voters will shortly decide on a ballot measure that would pave the way for a system of marijuana regulation in that state.Marijuana regulation would focus law enforcement resources where they belong: on behavior that puts others at risk, such as driving under the influence or selling marijuana to kids. Just as important, it would increase society's control over marijuana. Prohibition guarantees that we have no control.We've been down the prohibition path with alcohol, and it failed dismally. Drinking declined a bit, but any benefits were swamped by a huge increase in crime and violence generated when prohibition handed the liquor market over to gangsters. Crime bosses got rich, the murder rate skyrocketed, the prisons filled and deaths from tainted booze soared (after all, you can't enforce purity standards on a banned product).The record of marijuana prohibition has been even worse. Alcohol prohibition reduced drinking slightly, but, according to the U.S. government's own figures, use of marijuana by young people under 21 rose more than 2,000 percent after America banned marijuana in 1937. Government surveys show that nearly 100 million Americans have now used marijuana, an all-time record. And despite a recent slight decline (much hyped by Bush administration officials), marijuana use by teenagers remains near record levels.The striking thing about the European countries that have decriminalized marijuana possession is that every single one of them has a lower rate of marijuana use than the United States. In its landmark 2001 report, ''Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us,'' the National Research Council looked at the data and concluded -- largely based on the experiences of the dozen U.S. states that have adopted laws similar to Sgt. Donegan's proposal -- that stricter laws and tougher punishments have little or no effect on marijuana use.Those who support criminal penalties for marijuana possession often justify them based on the so-called gateway effect -- the idea that use of marijuana leads people to try hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin. But a White House-commissioned study by the Institute of Medicine found: ''There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a steppingstone [to hard drugs] on the basis of its particular physiological effect.''Recent research suggests that it is marijuana prohibition, not marijuana itself, that causes the ''gateway effect,'' by forcing marijuana into the same illicit drug marketplace as cocaine, speed and heroin.Look at the Netherlands, where adults are allowed to possess small amounts of marijuana and purchase it from regulated merchants rather than from the criminal underground. Not only are marijuana use rates far lower than in the United States, so are rates of hard drug use. A study in the May 2004 American Journal of Public Health that compared marijuana users in Amsterdam with those in San Francisco, where marijuana remains illegal, found no difference in the patterns of marijuana use in the two cities. But marijuana users in Amsterdam, with access to a regulated market completely separate from the hard drug trade, were far less likely to use cocaine, opiates, amphetamines or Ecstasy.It is time to listen to science and history, junk our failed experiment with marijuana prohibition, and replace it with a system of responsible regulation.Robert Kampia is executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. -- http://www.mpp.org/Complete Title: Regulation -- Not Prohibition -- Increases Control Over Pot Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)Author:  Robert KampiaPublished: September 24, 2004Copyright: 2004 The Sun-Times Co.Contact: letters suntimes.comWebsite: http://www.suntimes.com/Related Articles:U.S. Neither For Nor Against Plan To Fine for Pot http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19537.shtmlPolicing The Pot Patrol http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19536.shtmlDaley: Just Ticket Marijuana Users http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19525.shtmlSome Marijuana Arrests May Mean Just a Tickethttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19521.shtml
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Comment #5 posted by ALM on September 24, 2004 at 22:37:40 PT
Marijuana prohibition working just fine
The prohibition of marijuana seems crazy, until you realize that it was never about preventing drug abuse in the first place.You must get this through your heads people, cannabis was banned to boost corporate profits of industries that could not compete against it.Cotton, paper, alcohol, tobacco, textiles and the pharmaceutical industries are doing just fine under the current policy. For them cannabis prohibition has been a stellar success.We cannot win this fight until the general public understands this aspect of the problem.
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Comment #4 posted by goneposthole on September 24, 2004 at 09:51:56 PT
It can't be controlled
The amount of cannabis being bought and sold is a driving the government insane. Good. The drug war is meant to control people, the result is that the drug war is controlling the government. Good. Cannabis can't be stopped; no way, no how, no where.
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Comment #3 posted by E_Johnson on September 24, 2004 at 08:41:29 PT
The fines are much larger in New York
Apparently in New York the police also decided they would fine drug users, but they decided to charge more than $250. From the New York Times:A veteran narcotics detective who was about to retire with a lucrative disability pension was fired late last month after the Police Department concluded that he had helped another detective steal $250,000 in drug money in 1995, according to officials and documents. The theft was one of a series of crimes uncovered in a broad corruption investigation that began late last year.
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Comment #2 posted by dongenero on September 24, 2004 at 08:10:56 PT
oh....he's good, he's very good
Great article Rob! I wrote the SunTimes making some of these same points. (Not nearly as well as you however).This article is an outstanding and rational statement of the facts of the issue. Thanks for your work at MPP. I'm going to have to send a donation their way.
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on September 24, 2004 at 08:08:11 PT:
Way to go, Mr. Kampia!
And a nice shot on Montel's show when you pointed out you wish you had the anti's budgets. Too bad there wasn't enough time to expound on that, as in these tight times, government waste of any sort is fair game.
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