MARY JANE IS HERE TO STAY
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
JUNE 16, 2020
THIS CHAIN OF THOUGHTS BEGAN AS AN IMPULSE THAT I OFTEN FEEL,
WHICH IS TO DEFEND BERNIE SANDERS AND THE REST OF US OF THE PROGRESSIVE
PERSUASION FOR ONE OF HIS OPINIONS THAT CONSERVATIVE FOLKS DECRY. IT TURNS OUT
TO BE A DEEP, DEEP POOL OF MATTERS, THOUGH, AND I HOPE ENOUGH OF IT WILL BE USEFUL
FOR MY READERS TO FORGIVE MY VERBOSITY.
MANY PEOPLE ON THE “WAR ON DRUGS” SIDE HERE IN THE USA HATE AND
FEAR MARIJUANA, BUT EVEN MODERN MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS DO NOT VIEW IT IN THE
SAME LIGHT AS THE ADDICTIVE HARD DRUGS, OR THE PSYCHIATRICALLY DANGEROUS HALLUCINOGENS.
IT IS LIKE ALCOHOL IN THAT IT RELAXES AND STIMULATES AT THE SAME TIME, HENCE
IT’S APPEAL. IT IS LIKE CODEINE FOR PAIN AND SLEEPING DRUGS FOR SEVERE INSOMNIA,
IN THAT IT HAS LEGITIMATE MEDICAL USES, BUT CAN BE ABUSED. IT IS LIKE THE
HALLUCINOGENS – AND PERHAPS IS ONE – IN THAT IT HEIGHTENS SENSORY PERCEPTIONS
OR, IN A MINORITYOF PEOPLE, CAN PRODUCE “BAD TRIPS.” IT CERTAINLY SHOULDN’T BE
EASILY FOUND AND EATEN BY A CURIOUS CHILD. THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT OVERUSE IS
LIKELY TO CAUSE LUNG PROBLEMS AND EVEN BRAIN DAMAGE, BUT THAT IS A MEDICAL
ISSUE RATHER THAN CRIMINAL.
YES, ADDICTION OR “DRUG ABUSE” IS A MEDICAL MATTER. I ABSOLUTELY
DON’T WANT TO SEE PEOPLE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ANYTHING – MOST COMMONLY
ALCOHOL -- TO THE DEGREE THAT THEY ARE DANGEROUS BEHIND THE WHEEL OF A CAR,
BEAT THEIR WIFE AND CHILDREN, FEEL COMPELLED TO ROB PEOPLE TO GET MONEY TO
FINANCE THEIR HABIT, OR SIMPLY ARE UNABLE TO BREAK FREE OF THE CHAINS WITHOUT
SIGNIFICANT OUTSIDE HELP. THOSE THINGS ARE ALL BAD, OBVIOUSLY, BUT DO MEN BEAT
THEIR WIFE AND FAMILY BECAUSE OF DRUGS IN ALL CASES? NO. THEY DO IT SOMETIMES JUST
BECAUSE THEY ARE BASICALLY CRUEL, WHICH CAUSES PEOPLE OF MY TURN OF MIND TO
HATE THEM, AND OTHER TIMES BECAUSE THEY FEEL DESPERATE. THAT MAKES PEOPLE LIKE
ME FEEL EMPATHY FOR THEM, AND WANT TO SEE THEM RECEIVE HELP.
IN BOTH CASES THEY NEED PSYCHIATRIC INTERVENTION, INVOLUNTARILY
IF NECESSARILY, AND FOR LONGER THAN A MERE 24 HOUR PERIOD. PILLS CAN HELP, BUT TALK
THERAPY IS ESSENTIAL. ON A DOCUMENTARY SHOW FOCUSING ON SOCIOPATHY SOME YEARS BACK,
THE INTERVIEWER ASKED WHAT SHOULD OR COULD BE DONE ABOUT THAT STREAK OF
CRUELTY. THE PSYCHIATRIST SAID SIMPLY, “PEOPLE SHOULD STOP TORTURING THEIR
CHILDREN.” IN OTHER WORDS, THE WIFE OR CHILD BEATER HAS PROBABLY EXPERIENCED
THAT IN HIS OWN HOME AS A CHILD, THE RECIPIENT OF BEATINGS.
SOMETIMES I DISAGREE WITH THOSE WHO ARE RECOMMENDING COMMUNITY
CARE FOR WIFE BEATERS, BUT AS LONG AS IT IS LONG-TERM AND THOROUGH, IT MAY
ACTUALLY BE A GOOD THING TO TRY. PSYCHOLOGICALLY BASED FAMILY THERAPY IS ALSO
GOOD. TOO OFTEN, THE WOMAN WHO IS BEATEN GENUINELY DOES LOVE THE MAN, SO WHEN
HE GOES TO PRISON SHE EXPERIENCES SOME LOSS. I’M OF THE OPINION THAT SHE SHOULD
LEAVE HIM AND TAKE THE KIDS WITH HER, THOUGH, BECAUSE NOBODY DESERVES TO GO
THROUGH THAT. SHE CAN GRIEVE FOR THE LOSS OF LOVE UNDER A PSYCHOTHERAPIST’S CARE
AT SOME OTHER PLACE.
THE BOTTOM LINE FOR ME IS THIS. DRUG ADDICTS ARE NOT BEST
TREATED IN PRISON; THE MENTALLY ILL ARE TOTALLY MISPLACED WHEN IMPRISONED;
VICIOUS PEOPLE DO NEED TO BE IN PRISON BUT THEY ALSO NEED MENTAL HEALTH
TREATMENT WHILE THEY ARE THERE; SIMPLE POSSESSION OF A DRUG LIKE MARIJUANA
SHOULD NOT BE THE EVENT THAT TRIGGERS CAGING A PERSON FOR HALF THEIR LIFE, AND
USUALLY WITH NO MENTAL REHABILITATION. MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL, HOWEVER, ONE’S
RACE, RELIGION, ETHNICITY, SEXUAL CONDITION OF WHATEVER SORT, DISABILITY,
POVERTY OR ANOTHER STATUS MARKER SHOULD NOT BE THE CAUSE OF MORE FREQUENT
ARRESTS BY POLICE FOR POSSESSION WITHOUT THE COMMISSION OF A VIOLENT
CRIME, AND STRUGGLING AGAINST A POLICE OFFICER OR RUNNING AWAY IS NOT A VIOLENT
CRIME. TO DO OTHERWISE IS NOT “EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW.”
THE SOLUTION TO OUR AMERICAN PROBLEM IS, FIRST, TO MAKE
POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA NO LONGER A CRIME. THAT IS ALL THAT IS MEANT BY “LEGALIZING”
IT. IN ADDITION TO THAT, MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENTS OF ALL KINDS SHOULD BE
AVAILABLE FOR DRUG ISSUES, ALONG WITH ALL OTHER PSYCHIATRIC CONDITIONS. THAT IS
TRUE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE PRISONS. THOSE THINGS, AFTER YEARS OF TALKING ABOUT THEM,
HAVE NOT BEEN ADDRESSED SERIOUSLY. I PUT THE REASON FOR IT INTO TWO CATEGORIES –
THE “BASKET OF DEPLORABLES” OPINION, AND THE GOOD OLD “NOT MY PROBLEM.”
THINKING ABOUT THIS AGAIN NOW IS MAKING ME FEEL TIRED, SO I WILL
MOVE ON. HERE ARE SEVERAL ARTICLES RELATING TO MARIJUANA.
Biden-Sanders Task Force Members Push For Legalizing Marijuana
And Other Drug Reforms
Published 11 hours ago on June 15, 2020 , By Kyle Jaeger
Two members of a criminal justice task force organized by
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and former rival Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently discussed why they feel the criminalization of
marijuana is an untenable policy, with one—a former U.S. attorney
general—suggesting that even drugs such as opioids and cocaine should be
removed from the criminal justice system’s purview.
Another member, who is also a former federal prosecutor, argued
that the former vice president’s proposal to decriminalize marijuana is
insufficient and should be replaced with a call for broader cannabis
legalization.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder said in a C-SPAN appearance
last week that racial disparities in drug enforcement have long been a problem,
and the solution is to treat such offenses as a public health issue rather than
a criminal justice one.
“Think about the crack epidemic and how we dealt with it there.
We made it a criminal justice problem, we prosecuted people, we put people in
jail,” he said. “Now we’re dealing with the opioid situation and now we’ve
declared it—and I think correctly so and I’m not saying this is wrong—but we
declared it a public health problem. Two different bodies of people—people
perceived as being involved in crack, the use of crack and the use of opioids.
It’s a racial component there.”
“I’d like to be able to take out of the system those kinds of
determinations and to put law enforcement in places that are needed. But we
tend to, again, because of implicit biases, deploy law enforcement to a much
greater degree in African American communities and communities of color, which
results in disparity when it comes to arrest rates.”
Holder said cannabis represents another example of the problem
because “African Americans and whites use marijuana at roughly the same levels,
yet you’re four times more likely to go to jail using marijuana if you are a
person of color, if you’re black as opposed to if you’re white.”
“If I could change anything, I’d want to take all of that stuff
out of the system,” he said. “I think we have the possibility now, given all
the protests that we have seen.”
While Holder didn’t explicitly use the words “legalization” or
“decriminalization” to describe his views on how drugs should be handled, those
polices would generally be implicated when taking them “out of the system” of
law enforcement. The former attorney general has previously said he would vote
to legalize marijuana if he were in Congress, though he declined to reclassify
the drug under federal law when he had the power to do so during his time
leading the Justice Department.
Watch Holder discuss marijuana and drug policy below:
[GO TO WEBSITE.]
In an interview with NPR that was published last week, another
member of the Biden-Sanders task force, former federal prosecutor Chiraag
Bains, said that while he’s encouraged that Biden has made modest evolutions in
his criminal justice platform, “we need a specific agenda and it needs to be
bold.”
“I do see that the vice president is moving that direction,” he
said. “I just think we need to do more.”
Ideally, “more” will involve Biden moving past his opposition to
marijuana legalization and embracing the policy change ahead of the November
election. At this stage, the presumptive nominee has stopped short of backing
the reform move despite its popularity, particularly among Democratic voters.
Instead, he’s proposed decriminalizing cannabis possession, federally
rescheduling it, expunging prior records, legalizing medical use and letting
states set their own policies.
Bains, who was appointed to the task force by Sanders, said that
mere decriminalization doesn’t prevent some of the systemic issues that
marijuana prohibition has created.
“Decriminalization typically means that you don’t have a
criminal penalty, but you could still be issued a civil fine. And then there
are other kinds of consequences that could follow from that,” he said. “It’s
still illegal conduct. If possession of marijuana is just decriminalized and
that is the hook for extensive police involvement in people’s lives, and if you
haven’t addressed the underlying systemic problems in policing and the justice
system overall, then people could continue to be stopped and searched and
frisked and so forth.”
It’s not clear whether the task force will formally recommend
that Biden adopt a pro-legalization platform—or if he would accept that
recommendation even if they did. Pressed repeatedly on the issue, Biden has
continued to argue that more research should be done before enacting broad
reform.
He also recently indicated that his personal experience knowing
individuals who consume cannabis has not convinced him that the plant should be
legal for recreational use.
But it is the case that a majority of members on the task force
favor legalization—something his former primary rival Sanders has long
advocated for.
Biden’s campaign could feel additional pressure to have the
candidate back legalization to push back against the image of him as an
architect of punitive anti-drug laws that disproportionately impacted
communities of color. Biden’s record as a senator who authored bills further
criminalizing drugs is being leveraged by the Trump campaign, which is
attempting to cast the incumbent president as the criminal justice reform
candidate.
For the time being, the former vice president is stuck in a
criminal justice rut. On the one hand, progressives lament that he’s
maintaining opposition to policies like cannabis legalization and defunding the
police. On the other hand, conservatives are attempting to tie him directly to
the so-called “radical left” despite the fact that he’s made clear he’s not
willing to meet their demands.
Last week, for example, Biden said $300 million should be
invested in law enforcement for community policing training at a time when
protestors are calling for defunding. He also renewed his call for mandatory
drug rehabilitation as an alternative to incarceration for drug offenses.
“We must remain vigilant of alternate ways the state can inflict
violence on marginalized communities,” Maritza Perez, director of national
affairs for Drug Policy Action, said in a press release on Thursday. “One of
those ways is through mandating people to receive treatment they do not want.
Many of the same constructs that led to mass criminalization and incarceration
are behind involuntary and coercive treatment, including racism,
stigmatization, ableism, and profit over people.”
“Involuntary and coercive treatment are billed as the solution
to the problem of people who are unwilling to enter treatment,” she said. “The
root problem, however, is systematic inequality and lack of access to the
resources, including attractive evidence-based substance use disorder
treatment, that help people to live healthy, self-sufficient lives. Biden’s
proposal ignores this and is merely an extension of our country’s punitive approach
to drug use.”
Marijuana Moment is made possible with support from readers. If
you rely on our cannabis advocacy journalism to stay informed, please consider
a monthly Patreon pledge.
POLITICS Portland
Lawmakers Vote To Take Marijuana Tax Money Away From Police Department
Published 3 days ago on June 12, 2020
By Kyle Jaeger
The Portland City Council approved an amendment to a proposed
budget on Thursday that would divest marijuana tax revenue funds from the
city’s police department. The budget as a whole has not yet passed and will be
taken up again next week.
Amid widespread calls to defund law enforcement in response to
police killings of black Americans such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the
local lawmakers approved about $27 million in cuts as part of the spending
legislation. City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly voted against the full package,
however, arguing that it didn’t make enough cuts to police.
The Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA) had called on
the Council to stop appropriating cannabis tax dollars to the department in a
press release on Wednesday, emphasizing that a significant amount of that
revenue is funding law enforcement despite the city passing a measure in 2016
stipulating that those funds should be designated for substance misuse
treatment, public safety and small business development.
According to a 2019 report from the Portland City Auditor, 79
percent of marijuana tax revenue has gone to public safety, including about 46
percent directly to the Portland Police Bureau.
Minority Cannabis
@MinCannBusAssoc
Hey, #Portland!
Tell @tedwheeler to divest the tax revenue from Portland’s
cannabis tax away from @PortlandPolice.
A 2019 audit report showed that these funds were not properly
allocated, with 79% of cannabis tax revenue going to PPB.
https://minoritycannabis.org/2159-2/
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“Cannabis has historically—and continues to be to this day—a
tool weaponized against communities of color,” Dr. Rachel Knox, an MCBA board
member and chair of the Oregon Cannabis Commission, told Marijuana Moment. “We
can go back to the 1970s, to the Controlled Substances Act and to the beginning
of the war on drugs, where we saw marijuana being used, being wielded, against
communities of color to criminalize them for simple things like possession.”
“It’s really, in my opinion, paradoxical that we are now using
the economy of cannabis to fund the very institution that continues to
terrorize communities of color and continues to disproportionately police our
communities for the enforcement of marijuana laws,” she said.
The budget was approved for a second reading without an
emergency clause attached, meaning that unlike Thursday’s initial vote, it will
not require unanimous support for passage. If it is approved as amended when
lawmakers reconvene next week, marijuana tax revenue that’s current funding
police would instead be invested in restorative justice initiatives.
Lashay Wesley
✔
@LashayKATU
Commissioners approve a plan that will pull cannabis tax funds
from the PPB's traffic enforcement team. The funds will be used for restorative
justice. #LiveOnK2 https://twitter.com/LashayKATU/status/1271227406368423936 …
Lashay Wesley
✔
@LashayKATU
Portland City Commissioners unanimously approve motions to fund
a Tribal Liason a position and Civil Rights Title Six Program with PPB funds.
#LiveOnK2
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“This is not just an Oregon problem, this is a national
disgrace,” MCBA President Jason Ortiz said in a press release. “We call on all
cannabis justice activists to investigate their municipal finances, their local
cannabis company investments, and discover if and how dollars meant for
community uplift are being sent to law enforcement. This mockery of justice is
a shameful moment in our history and we will not allow it to be our future.”
MCBA wants jurisdictions across the country to follow Portland’s
lead and end the allocation of marijuana revenue to law enforcement.
“For too long we’ve invested so many resources to a law and
order approach that has been unjust, unfair, and violent particularly towards
communities of color, especially the Black community,” Commissioner Jo Ann
Hardesty said. “We simply cannot police our way out of inequities. Today, we
disrupt that pattern. Today, we begin to collectively reimagine and build
towards community safety and police alternatives.”
Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty
@JoAnnPDX
My full statement on today's budget vote. (Thread - 1)
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The commissioner also criticized the “no” vote from her colleague,
stating that she does not “want to let this detract from the very real steps
taken, but it is an important reminder on what performative allyship looks
like.”
“While we are making strides in realigning our budget with our
values, this ‘no’ vote does nothing to materially support our BIPOC
communities,” she said. “All this does is delay the much-needed relief for our
communities and continues to allow these units to exist for that much longer.”
Across the U.S., there are active conversations about the
relationship between cannabis criminalization and racial injustice in policing.
Two members of the House circulated a sign-on letter on Thursday
urging fellow lawmakers to keep marijuana reform in mind as a way to further
promote racial justice while they debate policing reform legislation.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom described his states’s legalization
of marijuana as a “civil rights” matter last week. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam
said that the passage of cannabis decriminalization legislation this year
represents an example of how his state has addressed racial inequities that are
inspiring mass protests.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) also recently said racial disparities in
marijuana enforcement is an example of a systemic injustice that underlies the
frustration of minority communities.
Last month, 12 House members introduced a resolution condemning
police brutality and specifically noting the racial injustices of the war on
drugs. It now has 173 cosponsors.
That measure came one week after 44 members of the House sent a
letter to the Justice Department, calling for an independent investigation into
a fatal police shooting of Taylor in a botched drug raid.
In New York, there’s a renewed push to pass a package of
criminal justice reform legislation that includes a bill to legalize marijuana.
The head of a federal health agency recently acknowledged racial
disparities in drug enforcement and the harm that such
disparate practices have caused—and on Monday, NORML [NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR
THE REFORM OF MARIJUANA LAWS; https://norml.org/] asked her to go on the
record to further admit that this trend in criminalization is more harmful
than marijuana itself.
Marijuana Moment is made possible with support from readers. If
you rely on our cannabis advocacy journalism to stay informed, please consider
a monthly Patreon pledge.
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