DdC

Last week, Canada's governing Liberal Party introduced a bill that would decriminalize the possession of up to 15 grams of marijuana. "Cannabis consumption is first and foremost a health matter," Justice Minister Martin Couchon declared. "It should not result in criminal penalties." Under the new plan, a minor pot offense would be punished with a citation and a fine, much like a speeding ticket.

The bill is strongly opposed by the Bush administration, which has threatened to step up drug searches at the border, creating traffic jams and delaying Canadian exports.

"It is my job to protect Americans from dangerous threats," John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, warned last year, "and right now, Canada is a dangerous staging area for some of the most dangerous marijuana."

The conflict revolves around a question being addressed in other Western nations: should marijuana be legal, illegal — or something in between?

Canada's move to decriminalize is part of a shift in international attitudes toward pot, away from the "reefer madness" legacy. Spain and Italy decriminalized marijuana in the 1990's. Portugal decriminalized it in 2001, Luxembourg and Belgium the next year. In the Netherlands — where pot has been available since 1976 — "pharmaceutical grade" cannabis is provided, free of charge, through the national health service. Britain plans to reduce penalties for possession this summer, a policy supported by the nation's leading medical journal, The Lancet. It concluded, "moderate indulgence in cannabis has little ill effect on health."

Meanwhile, the United States has escalated its war on pot. The number of marijuana arrests now approaches three-quarters of a million annually, largely for simple possession. More people are in prison for marijuana crimes today than ever before. Dozens, if not hundreds, are serving life sentences for nonviolent pot offenses. Attorney General John Ashcroft has called for full enforcement of the pot laws and spearheaded a crackdown on medicinal marijuana providers in California, though their efforts are legal under state law.

The war on marijuana, however, is by no means a partisan affair. It unites Democrats and Republicans in a uniquely American crusade waged on moral grounds.

Though Bill Clinton was the first president to admit having put a joint in his mouth, more people were arrested for marijuana during his administration than under any other American president. Richard M. Nixon may have seemed the nemesis of young pot smokers, but more than three times as many people were arrested for pot while Mr. Clinton was president. "Marijuana is illegal, dangerous, unhealthy and wrong," said Donna E. Shalala, his secretary of health and human services.

The prohibition of marijuana in the United States has historically been driven more by a fear and dislike of people associated with it than by reasoned consideration of its actual harm. The laws have been used to sanction racial minorities and nonconformists. Oddly enough, the first American law about marijuana, passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1619, required every household to grow it. Hemp was considered a valuable commodity.

Popular fears of marijuana arose in the early 20th century, prompted by the use of the drug by Mexican immigrants. Rumors spread about the "killer weed" that incited violent crimes and drove its users insane.

Marijuana was linked not only to poor Mexicans, but also to poor blacks and the new music they played: jazz. Jazz was then regarded much as hip-hop is today in some circles, as a subversive and barbaric threat to the national morality. Not long after marijuana was outlawed in 1937, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics planned to stage a nationwide roundup of black jazz musicians who smoked pot. Harry J. Anslinger, head of the bureau, hated jazz and saw it as a corrupting influence in American life. The plan was thwarted, however, by the inability of its agents to infiltrate the jazz milieu.

First Mexicans, blacks and jazz musicians; then beatniks and hippies; now members of the hip-hop world — marijuana has always been associated with minorities and subcultures that seem to threaten mainstream America. America's marijuana laws usually expressed that fear of outsiders in moralistic terms, while proving ineffective at stopping pot use.

The hippie counterculture of the 1960's rose at a time when America's marijuana laws were at their harshest; in Louisiana, possessing any pot could mean a prison sentence of 99 years. Pot use flourished, as a form of rebellion, and middle-class parents questioned the stiff laws, once their children were jailed for possessing a joint.

The comedians Cheech & Chong became the embodiment of a new stoner culture; far from alarming, it was presented as sweet and ridiculous. In 1972 a commission appointed by President Nixon advocated decriminalizing marijuana, aiming to "desymbolize it." The following year Oregon became the first state to decriminalize pot; 11 other states followed; and President Jimmy Carter supported decriminalization at the federal level. By the end of the 1970's, as marijuana laws were being relaxed in the United States, pot use among teenagers reached its peak and then started to decline.

Moral condemnations of pot smokers and long prison sentences were revived by President Ronald Reagan, as a part of that era's culture wars. Mr. Reagan's first drug czar, Carlton E. Turner, felt that marijuana use was linked to anti-authority behavior and insisted pot could turn young men into homosexuals.

As marijuana use declined among middle-class families, elected officials saw little political gain in opposing the tough drug laws. Many saw strong opposition to marijuana as an easy way to distance themselves from the excesses of the hippie counterculture.

Today, it is largely poor people and minority offenders who are imprisoned for marijuana offenses. Pot smokers can now lose their cars, houses, jobs, student loans and food stamps after getting busted.

The nation's harsh marijuana policy increasingly isolates Washington from many of its allies. In February, the Justice Department staged a nationwide roundup of bong and roach clip manufacturers. Even as the nation feared seemingly imminent attacks by Al Qaeda, an inchoate danger, Attorney General Ashcroft announced the success of "Operation Pipe Dream." Among those arrested was Tommy Chong, who now manufactures a line of bongs.

The symbolism could hardly have been more fitting. Mr. Chong recently plead guilty to a federal conspiracy charge and could face a prison sentence of five years.

Eric Schlosser is the author of "Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market."

<a href="http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread16476.shtml" target="_blank">The U.S. Bucks a Trend on Marijuana Laws</a>
Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Eric Schlosser
Published: June 01, 2003
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com" target="_blank">http ://www.nytimes.com</A>

<a href="http://www.jackherer.com/book/ch15.html" target="_blank">Dr. Heath/Tulane Study, 1974</a>
The Hype: Brain Damage and Dead Monkeys/Poisoning kids as a deterrent!



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Cannabis Myths

Marijuana is not more potent today than in the past...

This myth is the result of bad data. The researchers who made the claim of increased potency used as their baseline the THC content of marijuana seized by police in the early 1970s. Poor storage of this marijuana in un-air conditioned evidence rooms caused it to deteriorate and decline in potency before any chemical assay was performed. Contemporaneous, independent assays of unseized "street" marijuana from the early 1970s showed a potency equivalent to that of modern "street" marijuana. Actually, the most potent form of this drug that was generally available was sold legally in the 1920s and 1930s by the pharmaceutical company Smith-Klein under the name, "American Cannabis".

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"The German people have no idea of the extent to which they have to be gulled in order to be led."

"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one." From Benito Mussolini contributing to the "London Sunday Express," December 8, 1935

"How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured...No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer..."
HARRY J ANSLINGER Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics 1930 1962

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"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it."

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"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." From Benito Mussolini contributing to the "London Sunday Express," December 8, 1935



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"The masses have little time to think. And how incredible is the willingness of modern man to believe."

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"Another weapon I discovered early was the power of the printed word to sway souls to me. The newspaper was soon my gun, my flag - a thing with a soul that could mirror my own." Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini together in the heyday of 1930s fascism.

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