From the archives:
"Reefer
Madness" by Eric Schlosser (August, 1994).
"Marijuana has
not been de facto legalized, and the war on drugs is not just about cocaine
and heroin. In fact, today, when we don't have enough jail cells for
murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals, there may be more people in
federal and state prisons for marijuana offenses than at any other time in U.S.
history."
"Marijuana and
the Law" by Eric Schlosser (September, 1994).
"The
vigorous enforcement of marijuana laws has resulted in four million arrests
since the early 1980s. Owing to mandatory-minimum sentences, many of those
convicted are receiving stiff prison terms, even as violent criminals are released
for lack of space."
"White Collar Pill Party" by Bruce Jackson (August, 1966).
A good eye, a sharp ear, and quiet personal reseaarch characterize Bruce Jackson's examination of American manners and morals. This report on a spreading social habit is a long step ahead of journalism's routine portrayal of what has come to be called the drug scene.
|
Gray's punishment, although severe, is by no means unusual in the United
States. The laws of at least fifteen states now require life sentences for
certain nonviolent marijuana offenses. In Montana a life sentence can be
imposed for growing a single marijuana plant or selling a single joint. Under
federal law the death penalty can be imposed for growing or selling a large
amount of marijuana, even if it is a first offense.
The rise in marijuana use among American teenagers became a prominent issue
during last year's presidential campaign, fueled by Republican accusations that
President Bill Clinton was "soft on drugs." Teenage
marijuana use has indeed
grown considerably since 1992; by one measure it has doubled. But that increase
cannot be attributed to any slackening in the enforcement of the nation's
marijuana laws. In fact, the number of Americans arrested each year for
marijuana offenses has increased by 43 percent since Clinton took office. There
were roughly 600,000 marijuana-related arrests nationwide in 1995 -- an
all-time
record. More Americans were arrested for marijuana offenses during the first
three years of Clinton's presidency than during any other three-year period in
the nation's history. More Americans are in prison today for marijuana offenses
than at any other time in our history. And yet teenage marijuana use continues
to grow.
The war on drugs,
launched by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, began as an
assault on marijuana. Its effects are now felt throughout America's
criminal-justice system. In 1980 there were almost twice as many violent
offenders in federal prison as drug offenders. Today there are far more people
in federal prison for marijuana crimes than for violent crimes. More people are
now incarcerated in the nation's prisons for marijuana than for manslaughter or
rape.
In an era when the fear of violence pervades the United States, small-time pot
dealers are being given life sentences while violent offenders are being
released early, only to commit more crimes. The federal prison system and
thirty-eight state prison systems are now operating above their rated capacity.
Attempts to reduce dangerous prison overcrowding have been hampered by the
nation's drug laws. Prison cells across the country are filled with nonviolent
drug offenders whose mandatory-minimum sentences do not allow for parole. At
the same time, violent offenders are routinely being granted early release. A
recent study by the Justice Department found that in 1992 violent offenders on
average were released after serving less than half of their sentences. A person
convicted of murder in the United States could expect a punishment of less than
six years in prison. A person convicted of kidnapping could expect about four
years. Another Justice Department study revealed that almost a third of all
violent offenders who are released from prison will be arrested for another
violent crime within three years. No one knows how many violent crimes these
released inmates commit without ever being caught. In 1992 the average
punishment for a violent offender in the United States was forty-three months
in prison. The average punishment, under federal law, for a marijuana offender
that same year was about fifty months in prison.
Even legislation aimed at reducing violent crime has been subverted by the
legal underpinnings of the drug war. According to a report by the Center on
Juvenile and Criminal Justice, California's much-heralded "three strikes,
you're out" law has imprisoned twice as many people for marijuana offenses as
for murder, rape, and kidnapping combined.
The vehemence of marijuana's opponents and the harsh punishments routinely
administered to marijuana offenders cannot be explained by a simple concern for
public health. Paraplegics, cancer patients, epileptics, people with AIDS, and
people suffering from multiple sclerosis have in recent years been imprisoned
for using marijuana as medicine. The attack on marijuana, since its origins
early in this century, has in reality been a cultural war -- a moral
crusade in
defense of traditional American values. The laws used to fight marijuana are
now causing far more harm to those values than the drug itself. In order to
eliminate marijuana use, state and federal legislators have sanctioned an
enormous increase in prosecutorial power, the emergence of a class of
professional informers, and the widespread confiscation of private property by
the government without trial -- legal weapons reminiscent of those used
in the
former Soviet-bloc nations. The long prison sentences given to growers and
dealers have pushed marijuana prices skyward, creating a domestic industry
whose annual revenues now rival those of cotton, soybeans, or corn. U.S. public
officials, like their counterparts in Mexico, Colombia, and Bolivia, are being
corrupted with drug money. Millions of ordinary Americans have been arrested
for marijuana offenses in the past decade, and hundreds of thousands have been
imprisoned, yet marijuana use is increasing and has regained its status as a
symbol of youthful rebellion. Instead of debating the wisdom of our current
policies, members of Congress and of the Administration are competing to see
who can appear toughest on drugs. For years the war on drugs has been driven by
political concerns, without regard to its consequences. But at the state and
local levels, where the costs of that war are most keenly felt and unlikely
alliances have begun to form, there are signs that madness may give way to
common sense.
 HE 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act marked a profound shift not only
in America's
drug-control policy but also in the workings of its criminal-justice system.
The bill greatly increased the penalties for federal drug offenses. More
important, it established mandatory-minimum sentences, transferring power from
federal judges to prosecutors. The mandatory minimums were based not on an
individual's role in a crime but on the quantity of drugs involved. Judges in
such cases could no longer reduce a prison term out of mercy or compassion.
Prosecutors were given the authority to decide whether a mandatory-minimum
sentence applied.
This new law did not represent the culmination of a careful deliberative
process. Nor did it reflect the thinking of the nation's best legal minds. The
mandatory-minimum provisions were written and enacted in a matter of weeks
without a single public hearing. The most important drug legislation in a
generation -- the enforcement of which would more than triple the size
of the
federal-prison population and whose sentencing philosophy would influence state
drug laws across the country -- was prompted by the death of a popular
basketball
player shortly before a congressional election.
Len Bias was a local hero in Washington, D.C., clean-cut and all-American, a
University of Maryland basketball star who had been drafted by the Boston
Celtics at the age of twenty-two. On June 17, 1986, Bias attended a ceremony in
Boston to sign a contract with the Celtics. Two days later he died of heart
failure, allegedly caused by crack cocaine. When Speaker of the House Tip
O'Neill returned to Boston for the Fourth of July congressional recess,
everyone seemed to be talking about the death of the Celtics' first-round draft
pick. As fears of crack cocaine swept the nation, O'Neill grew worried that the
Democratic Party might be labeled soft on drugs. He returned to Washington in
mid-July determined to pass an omnibus drug-control bill before the upcoming
election. The legislation had to be drafted within a month. Eric E. Sterling,
who was then the assistant counsel for the House Subcommittee on Crime,
recently told me that staff members scrambled to assemble a bill. The process
of selecting drug quantities to trigger the mandatory-minimum sentences was far
from scientific, according to Sterling: "Numbers were being picked out of thin
air."
The drug-control bill left the subcommittee in mid-August, while many academics
and government officials were away on vacation. There had been little time to
study the potential costs of the legislation or its ramifications for the
criminal-justice system. In the absence of public hearings there had been no
input from federal judges, prison authorities, or drug-abuse experts. President
and Mrs. Reagan were calling for tough new drug-control measures, and House
Democrats rushed to provide them. Only sixteen congressmen voted against the
bill, which passed in the Senate by a voice vote. Reagan signed the final
version of the bill on October 27, just a week before Election Day.
In Smoke and Mirrors, which was published last year, Dan Baum, a former
Wall Street Journal reporter, gives a definitive account of the politics
surrounding Reagan's war on drugs. Conservative parents' groups opposed to
marijuana had helped to ignite the Reagan Revolution. Marijuana symbolized the
weakness and permissiveness of a liberal society; it was held responsible for
the slovenly appearance of teenagers and their lack of motivation. Carlton
Turner, Reagan's first drug czar, believed that marijuana use was inextricably
linked to "the present young-adult generation's involvement in anti-military,
anti-nuclear power, anti-big business, anti-authority demonstrations." A
public-health approach to drug control was replaced by an emphasis on law
enforcement. Drug abuse was no longer considered a form of illness; all drug
use was deemed immoral, and punishing drug offenders was thought to be more
important than getting them off drugs. The drug war soon became a bipartisan
effort, supported by liberals and conservatives alike. Nothing was to be gained
politically by defending drug abusers from excessive punishment.
Drug-control legislation was proposed, almost like clockwork, during every
congressional-election year in the 1980s. Election years have continued to
inspire bold new drug-control schemes. On September 25 of last year Speaker of
the House Newt Gingrich introduced legislation demanding either a life sentence
or the death penalty for anyone caught bringing more than two ounces of
marijuana into the United States. Gingrich's bill attracted twenty-six
co-sponsors, though it failed to reach the House floor. A few months earlier
Senator Phil Gramm had proposed denying federal welfare benefits, including
food stamps, to anyone convicted of a drug crime, even a misdemeanor. Gramm's
proposal was endorsed by a wide variety of senators -- including
liberals such as
Barbara Boxer, Tom Harkin, Patrick Leahy, and Paul Wellstone. A revised version
of the amendment, limiting the punishment to people convicted of a drug felony,
was incorporated into the welfare bill signed by President Clinton during the
presidential campaign. Possessing a few ounces of marijuana is a felony in most
states, as is growing a single marijuana plant. As a result, Americans
convicted of a marijuana felony, even if they are disabled, may no longer
receive federal welfare or food stamps. Convicted murderers, rapists, and child
molesters, however, will continue to receive these benefits.
 EDERAL prosecutors now have an extraordinary amount of power
in drug cases. A
U.S. attorney can determine the eventual punishment for a drug offense by
deciding what quantity of drugs to list in the indictment, whether a
mandatory-minimum sentence should apply, and whether to press charges at all.
Drug offenses differ from most crimes in being subject to federal, state, and
local laws. The federal government could prosecute any and every marijuana
offender in the United States if it so desired, but in a typical year it
charges fewer than one percent of those arrested. By choosing to enter a
particular case, a federal prosecutor can greatly affect the penalty for a
marijuana crime. In 1985 Donald Clark, a Florida watermelon farmer, was
arrested for growing marijuana, convicted under state law, and sentenced to
probation. Five years later the local U.S. attorney decided to prosecute Donald
Clark under federal law for exactly the same crime. Clark was found guilty and
sentenced to life in prison without parole. A Justice Department spokesman
quoted in Smoke and Mirrors later defended the policy of trying drug
offenders twice for the same crime: "The intent is to get the bad guys off the
street with apologies to none."
Under civil forfeiture statutes passed by Congress in the 1980s, the federal
government now has the right to seize real estate, vehicles, cash, securities,
jewelry, and any other property connected to a marijuana offense. The
government need not prove that the property was bought with the proceeds of
illegal drug sales, only that it was used -- or was intended to be
used -- in a
crime. A yacht can be seized if a single joint is discovered on it. A farm can
be seized if a single marijuana plant is found growing there. According to
Steven B. Duke, a professor at Yale Law School, in some cases a house can be
seized if it contains books on marijuana cultivation. The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled last year that the government can seize property even when its owner had
no involvement in, or knowledge of, the crime that was committed. When property
is seized, its legal title passes instantly to the government. The burden of
proving its "innocence" falls upon the original owner. In 1994 assets worth
roughly $1.5 billion were forfeited under state and federal laws. In perhaps 80
percent of those cases the owner was never charged with a crime. The forfeiture
statutes have deepened the injustice of the war on drugs by enabling wealthy
defendants to surrender property in return for shorter sentences; plea-bargain
negotiations often turn into haggling sessions worthy of a Middle Eastern
souk.
The proceeds from an asset forfeiture are divided among the law-enforcement
agencies involved in the case, a policy that invites the abuse of power. Former
Justice Department officials have admitted in newspaper interviews that many
forfeitures are driven by the need to meet budget projections. The guilt or
innocence of a defendant has at times been less important than the availability
of his or her assets. In California thirty-one state and federal drug agents
raided Donald P. Scott's 200-acre Malibu ranch on the pretext that marijuana
was growing there. Scott was inadvertently killed during the raid. No evidence
of marijuana cultivation was discovered, and a subsequent investigation by the
Ventura County District Attorney's Office found that the drug agents had been
motivated partly by a desire to seize the $5 million ranch. They had obtained
an appraisal of the property weeks before the raid. In New Jersey, Nicholas L.
Bissell Jr., a local prosecutor known as the Forfeiture King, helped an
associate to buy land seized in a marijuana case for a small fraction of its
market value. In Connecticut, Leslie C. Ohta, a federal prosecutor known as the
Queen of Forfeitures, seized the house of Paul and Ruth Derbacher when their
twenty-two-year-old grandson was arrested for keeping marijuana there. Although
the Derbachers were in their eighties, had owned the house for almost forty
years, and had no idea that their grandson kept pot in his room, Ohta insisted
upon forfeiture of the house. People should know, she argued, what goes on in
their own home. Not long after, Ohta's eighteen-year-old son was arrested for
selling LSD from her Chevrolet Blazer. Allegedly, he had also sold marijuana
from her house in Glastonbury. Ohta was quickly transferred out of the U.S.
attorney's forfeiture unit -- but neither her car nor her house was
seized by the
government.
The only way a defendant can be sure of avoiding a mandatory-minimum sentence
under federal law is to plead guilty and give "substantial assistance" in the
prosecution of someone else. The willingness to turn informer has become more
important to a drug offender's fate than his or her role in a crime. The U.S.
attorney, not the judge, decides whether the defendant's cooperation is
sufficient to warrant a reduction of the sentence. Although this system helps
to avoid expensive trials and provides evidence for future indictments, it also
leads to longer prison terms for the minor participants in a drug case.
Kingpins have a great deal of information to provide, whereas drug couriers
often have none.
A little-known provision of the forfeiture laws rewards confidential informers
with up to 25 percent of the assets seized as a result of their testimony.
During the 1980s the United States developed a wealthy and industrious class of
professional informers. In 1985 the federal government spent $25 million on
informers. Last year it spent more than $100 million.
Informing on others has become not just a way to avoid punishment but a way of
life. In major drug cases an informer can earn a million dollars or more. A
recent investigation by the National Law Journal found that the
proportion of federal search warrants relying exclusively on unidentified
informers nearly tripled from 1980 to 1993, increasing from 24 percent to 71
percent. The growing reliance on informers has given an unprecedented degree of
influence to criminals who have a direct financial interest in gaining
convictions. Informers have been caught framing innocent people.
Law-enforcement agents have been caught using nonexistent informers to justify
search warrants.
"Criminals are likely to say and do almost anything to get what they want,"
Stephen S. Trott, a federal judge who was the chief of the Justice Department's
Criminal Division during the Reagan years, says in the National Law
Journal. "This willingness to do anything includes not only truthfully
spilling the beans on friends and relatives but also lying, committing perjury,
manufacturing evidence, soliciting others to corroborate their lies with more
lies, and double-crossing anyone with whom they come into contact,
including -- and especially -- the prosecutor."
The legal and monetary rewards for informing on others have even spawned a
whole new business: the buying and selling of drug leads. Defendants who hope
to avoid a lengthy mandatory-minimum sentence but who have no valuable
information to give prosecutors can now secretly buy information from vendors
on the black market. According to Tom Dawson, a prominent Kansas defense
attorney, some professional informers now offer their services to defendants in
drug cases for fees of up to $250,000.
Most of the people being imprisoned for marijuana offenses are ordinary
Americans without important information to provide, large assets to trade, or
the income to pay for high-priced attorneys. Allen St. Pierre, the deputy
director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, has
spoken to literally thousands of people who have been arrested for pot-related
offenses. He receives about a hundred phone calls each week from people who are
losing their jobs, losing their houses, feeling desperate for advice. They tend
to be working people: house painters, clerks, carpenters, and mechanics. Their
cases tend to be handled, or mishandled, by family attorneys with little
knowledge of the marijuana laws. America's prisons are full of poor and
working-class marijuana offenders.
Children of the upper middle class are rarely sent to prison for marijuana
offenses today. Their parents usually enroll them in private drug-treatment
programs before trial and hire attorneys who specialize in drug cases.
Privileged young men and women are usually treated more leniently in court. The
daughter of Judge Rudolph Slate, the man who sentenced Douglas Lamar Gray to
life for buying a pound of marijuana, was later arrested for selling the drug.
She was granted youthful-offender status. The records in her case have been
sealed; most likely she received probation. The son of Indiana Congressman Dan
Burton, an outspoken proponent of life sentences for some marijuana-related
crimes, was arrested for transporting nearly eight pounds of pot from Louisiana
to Indiana in the trunk of his car. Six months later Danny L. Burton II was
arrested again, this time at his Indianapolis apartment, where police found
thirty marijuana plants and a shotgun with six shells. Federal prosecutors
declined to press charges against Burton's son; Indiana prosecutors gained
dismissal of the charges against him; and a Louisiana judge sentenced him to
community service, probation, and house arrest. As chairman of the House
Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Burton is now leading the
investigation of ethical lapses in the Clinton Administration. He will not
comment on his son's case.
The harshest punishments are given to people who won't cooperate with the
government. The pressure to inform on others is immense -- as is the
cost of
resisting it. In 1993 Jodie Israel was arrested for marijuana possession and
balked at testifying against her husband, a Rastafarian marijuana trafficker.
Federal prosecutors in Montana threatened her with a long prison sentence.
Although Israel possessed only eight ounces of marijuana at the time of her
arrest, under the broad federal conspiracy laws she could be held liable for
many of her husband's crimes. Israel was thirty-one years old, the mother of
four young children. She had never before been charged with any crime. Judge
Jack Shanstrom warned her in court that without a promise of cooperation "you
are not going to see your children for ten plus years." Nevertheless, Israel
refused to testify against her husband. She was sentenced to eleven years in
federal prison without parole. Her husband was sentenced to twenty-nine years
without parole. Her children were scattered among various relatives.
 N 1988 State Senator Stewart J. Greenleaf wrote the bill that made tough
mandatory-minimum drug sentences part of Pennsylvania law. Greenleaf, a
Republican from rural Montgomery County, is now the chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee in Pennsylvania -- and an outspoken critic of
mandatory-minimum sentences. "These laws just haven't worked as we planned," he
now admits. Politicians are refusing to acknowledge the true cost of the
nation's drug laws. "We're not being honest," Greenleaf says, "to the public or
to ourselves."
In adopting mandatory-minimum sentences, Pennsylvania had simply followed the
federal government's lead, aiming to give long prison terms to major drug
dealers. Instead the state's prisons have been flooded with low-level drug
offenders who cannot be paroled. Over the past decade the state's prison
population has doubled. Its prison system is now operating at 54 percent above
capacity. In order to keep pace with the current rate of incarceration,
Pennsylvania will have to open a new prison every ninety days. Each new prison
cell costs about $110,000 to build and about $25,000 a year to maintain. At the
moment nearly 70 percent of the inmates in Pennsylvania's prisons are
nonviolent offenders. Convicted murderers granted early release have gone on a
number of well-publicized killing sprees. "Expensive prison space must be held
for those who are truly violent or career criminals," Greenleaf has come to
believe. "This problem has transcended party lines and social ideologies; it is
a matter of practicality and fiscal responsibility."
As prisons become more and more overcrowded, state legislators across the
country are exploring a wide range of alternative sentences. At least half a
dozen states now allow low-level drug offenders to avoid prison terms by
entering drug-treatment programs. In Pennsylvania, where perhaps 80 percent of
all crimes are being committed by either alcohol or drug abusers, the state
District Attorneys Association and the local chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union both advocate emphasizing substance-abuse treatment rather than
imprisonment. Greenleaf favors treatment programs, intensive probation, and
ninety-day "shock incarceration" in jail or boot camps for most drug
offenders -- alternatives that are far less expensive than sending
people to
prison. Although he worries about the political fallout from his stance, he
will not budge. "We have to be smart about whom we incarcerate," Greenleaf
says, "and not waste taxpayers' money."
The trend toward alternative sentences for drug offenders has lately gained
support in some unexpected quarters. Arizona's recently passed Proposition 200
not only allows the medicinal use of marijuana but also has reformed the
state's approach to drug control. Since the early 1980s Arizona had
aggressively pursued a drug strategy of "zero tolerance," administering harsh
punishments for illegal drug use, not just for drug trafficking and possession.
Failing a urine test was grounds for prosecution in Arizona: a person could
face criminal charges in Phoenix for a joint smoked in Philadelphia days or
even weeks before. Arizona's prisons grew overcrowded, and tent cities rose in
the desert to house inmates. Proposition 200 declared that "drug abuse is a
public health problem" and vowed to "medicalize" the state's drug-control
policy. In order to free up prison cells for violent offenders, the initiative
called for the immediate release of all nonviolent prisoners who had been
convicted of drug possession or use. It called for drug treatment, drug
education, and community service instead of prison terms for nonviolent minor
drug offenders. And it called for the creation of a state Drug Treatment and
Education Fund through an increased tax on alcohol and tobacco. Proposition 200
was endorsed by aging hippies, former members of the Reagan Administration, the
retired Democratic senator Dennis DeConcini, and the retired Republican senator
Barry Goldwater, among others. On Election Day, Arizona voters backed the
initiative by a margin of two to one. But the Clinton Administration attacked
Proposition 200 as though it were a dangerous heresy, threatening to block its
implementation and to prosecute any physicians who recommend marijuana to their
patients. Clinton's drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, called the Arizona initiative a
subterfuge, part of "a national strategy to legalize drugs."
While the Administration escalates the war on marijuana, law-enforcement
officers on the front lines are beginning to question some of its tactics.
Steve White served with the Drug Enforcement Administration and its
predecessor, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, for twenty-eight
years before his retirement, last year. Twenty-three of those years were spent
working undercover in Indiana, mainly tracking down marijuana growers. Under
White's leadership the Cannabis Eradication Program arrested more pot growers
every year in Indiana than were arrested in just about any other state. White
strongly condemns marijuana use and gives anti-drug lectures at high schools.
But he opposes the long prison terms that first-time marijuana growers now
receive. "I'm a big advocate of alternative sentencing," he says. "For most pot
growers, prison isn't the answer. These aren't violent people. They usually
have jobs, and homes, and children. Why make their families a burden to the
community?" White has learned over the years that marijuana growers come from
all sorts of backgrounds and possess a variety of skills. "Put them to work,
make them do community service," he suggests. "Prison terms only strengthen
their anti-establishment views." Most commercial marijuana growers will quit
the business after being caught once or twice. White feels little sympathy,
however, for the unrepentant growers who are motivated by big money and the
thrill of breaking the law. After a third conviction for large-scale marijuana
cultivation, he thinks, alternative sentences should no longer apply. "Make
prison a real pleasant place," White says, "and keep those guys in there
forever."
The long prison sentences now given to marijuana offenders have turned
marijuana -- a hardy weed that grows wild in all fifty states --
into a precious
commodity. Some marijuana is currently worth more per ounce than gold. A decade
ago the policy analysts Peter Reuter and Mark A. R. Kleiman observed that the
price of an illegal drug is determined not only by its supply, demand, and
production costs but also by the legal risks of selling it. As the risks
increase, so does the profit. This theory has been supported by the huge rise
in marijuana prices since the latest war on drugs began. In 1982 the street
price for an ounce (adjusted for inflation) was about $75. By 1992 it had
reached about $325. Although the costs of cultivating marijuana rose somewhat
during that period, most of the 333 percent price increase represented sheer
profit -- the reward for evading punishment. The legal risks of
cultivation have
encouraged growers to produce much more potent strains of the drug, which bring
a higher price and require a lower volume of sales. Growers have also found
another means of reducing their risk: bribery. Throughout the nation's rural
heartland local sheriffs are being paid to look the other way during the
marijuana harvest. Even local prosecutors and judges are being corrupted by
drug money. The large profit margins transformed U.S. marijuana cultivation in
the 1980s from a fringe economic activity into a multibillion-dollar
industry -- despite the fact that marijuana use was falling at the time. In
Indiana the value of the annual marijuana crop now rivals that of corn. In
Alabama it rivals that of cotton. The threat of long prison sentences has
succeeded in making some marijuana growers rich, but it has hardly affected the
availability of pot. In 1982, when President Reagan declared his war on drugs,
88.5 percent of America's high school seniors said that it was "fairly easy" or
"very easy" for them to obtain marijuana. In 1994 the proportion of seniors who
said they could easily obtain it was 85.5 percent.
 ARRY J. Anslinger headed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics
during the 1930s and
supervised the campaign to make marijuana illegal under state and federal laws.
In "Marijuana: Assassin of Youth" and similar articles Anslinger led readers to
believe that the drug rendered its users homicidal, suicidal, and insane. Amid
the anxieties of the Great Depression, marijuana use was linked to poor
Mexicans and blacks, "inferior" races whose alleged sexual promiscuity and
violence stemmed partly from smoking pot. "The dominant race and most
enlightened countries are alcoholic," one opponent of marijuana use claimed,
expressing a widely held belief, "whilst the races and nations addicted to hemp
. . . have deteriorated both mentally and physically." Marijuana was the
"killer weed," a foreign influence on American life that was capable of
transforming healthy teenagers into sex-crazed maniacs. Anslinger later
admitted to the historian David F. Musto that the FBN had somewhat exaggerated
the dangers of marijuana. Anslinger had hoped to make marijuana seem so awful
and so terrifying that young people would be afraid to try it even once.
Marijuana's "un-American" reputation has made it immensely appealing to
rebellious, disaffected youth. Lurid propaganda films like Reefer
Madness, Devil's Harvest, and Marijuana: Weed With Roots in
Hell, which promised a glimpse of not only the horrors but also the "weird
orgies" caused by the drug, no doubt encouraged more than one brave soul to
take a puff. The huge difference between the alleged and the actual effects of
marijuana has long provided young people with grounds for distrusting
authority. Praised by rebels and artists as diverse as Cab Calloway, Jack
Kerouac, Arlo Guthrie, and Snoop Doggie Dog, marijuana has attained a lofty
symbolic importance. A distinct culture has evolved around marijuana, one
championed by proud outcasts. The laws aimed at that culture have only
perpetuated it, enshrining the cannabis leaf as a symbol of adolescent
protest.
In 1970 President Richard Nixon appointed a commission to study the health
effects, legal status, and social impact of marijuana use. After more than a
year of research the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded
that marijuana should be decriminalized under state and federal laws. The
commission unanimously agreed that the possession of small amounts of marijuana
in the home should no longer be a crime. "Recognizing the extensive degree of
misinformation about marijuana as a drug, we have tried to demythologize
it," the commission explained. "Viewing the use of marijuana in its wider
social context, we have tried to desymbolize it." The commission argued
that society should strongly discourage marijuana use while devoting more
resources to preventing and treating heavy use. "Considering the range of
social concerns in contemporary America," it said, "marijuana does not, in our
considered judgment, rank very high."
President Nixon felt betrayed by the commission and rejected its findings. A
decade later the National Academy of Sciences studied the health effects of
marijuana and concluded that it should be decriminalized, a finding that
President Reagan rejected. Nevertheless, ten states have largely decriminalized
marijuana possession, thereby saving billions of dollars in court and prison
costs -- without experiencing an increase in marijuana use. Ohio
currently has
the most liberal marijuana laws in the nation: possession of up to three ounces
is a misdemeanor punishable by a $100 fine. In July of last year, with little
fanfare, Ohio decriminalized the cultivation of small amounts of marijuana for
personal use. The change in the laws was backed by the state's conservative
Republican governor, George V. Voinovich.
There seems to be little correlation between the severity of a nation's
marijuana laws and the rate of use among its teenagers. In the United Kingdom,
where drug penalties are harshly enforced, the rate of marijuana use among
fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds is the highest in Western Europe -- one
and a half
times the rate in Spain and the Netherlands, where the drug has been
decriminalized. The UK rate is six times as high as the rate in Sweden, a
nation that has single-mindedly pursued a public-health approach to drug
control. Sweden now has the lowest rate of marijuana use in Western Europe.
Under Swedish law the maximum punishment for most marijuana traffickers is a
prison term of three years.
Cultural factors exert far more influence on a country's rate of marijuana use
than any changes in the law. The Netherlands decriminalized marijuana in
1976 -- and yet teenage use there declined by as much as 40 percent
over the next
decade. The rate of use among American teenagers peaked in 1979 and had already
fallen by 40 percent when Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, in 1986. As
young Americans became more health conscious, their use of alcohol and tobacco
also declined. Since 1979 the rate of alcohol use among American teenagers has
fallen by 52 percent -- without any life sentences for selling beer.
The conclusions of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse are as
valid today as they were twenty-five years ago: the United States should
decriminalize marijuana for personal use; possessing small amounts of it should
no longer be a crime; growing or selling it commercially, using it in public,
distributing it to young people, and driving under its influence should remain
strictly forbidden. The decriminalization of marijuana -- including, as
in the
Ohio model, the cultivation of small amounts -- could be the first step
toward a
rational and sensible drug-control policy. The benefits would be felt
immediately. Law-enforcement resources would be diverted from the apprehension
and imprisonment of marijuana offenders to the prevention of much more serious
crimes. The roughly $2.4 billion the United States spends annually just to
process its marijuana arrests would be available to fund more-useful endeavors,
such as treatment for drug education and substance abuse. Thousands of prison
cells would become available to house violent criminals. The profits from
growing and selling marijuana commercially would fall, as would the incentive
to bribe public officials. But the decriminalization of marijuana is only a
partial solution to the havoc caused by the war on drugs. Mandatory-minimum
sentences for drug offenders should be repealed, allowing judges to regain
their time-honored powers and ensuring that an individual's punishment fits the
crime. The asset-forfeiture laws should be amended so that criminal
investigations are not motivated by greed -- so that assets can be
forfeited only
after a conviction, in amounts proportionate to the illegal activity. The use
of professional informers should be limited and carefully monitored. The
message sent to the nation's teenagers by these steps would be that our society
will no longer pursue a failed policy and needlessly ruin lives in order to
appear tough.
Decriminalizing marijuana would also help to resolve the current dispute over
its medicinal use. Seriously ill patients would no longer risk criminal
prosecution while trying to obtain their medicine. Although heavy marijuana use
may exacerbate underlying psychological problems and may harm the respiratory
system through the inhalation of smoke, marijuana is one of the least toxic
therapeutically active substances known. No fatal dose of the drug has been
established, despite more than 5,000 years of recorded use. Marijuana is less
toxic than many common foods. Denying cancer patients, AIDS patients, and
paraplegics access to a potentially useful medicine that is safer than most
legally prescribed drugs is inhumane. Some of the claims made in the 1970s and
1980s about the effects of marijuana -- that it causes brain damage,
chromosome
damage, sterility, infertility, and even homosexuality -- have never
been proved.
Marijuana use may pose dangers that are still unknown. And yet the British
medical journal The Lancet, in a recent editorial calling for the
decriminalization of marijuana, felt confident enough to declare, "The smoking
of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health."
Although marijuana does not turn teenagers into serial killers or irreversibly
destroy their brains, it should not be smoked by young people. Marijuana is a
powerful intoxicant, and its use can diminish academic and athletic
performance. Adolescents experience enough social and emotional confusion
without the added handicap of being stoned. If marijuana use does indeed exert
subtly harmful effects on the reproductive and immune systems, young people
could be at greatest risk. Lying to teenagers about marijuana's effects,
however, only encourages them to doubt official warnings about much more
dangerous drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines. The drug culture of
the 1960s arose in the midst of tough anti-drug laws and simplistic anti-drug
propaganda. In a nation where both major political parties accept millions of
dollars from alcohol and tobacco lobbyists, demands for "zero tolerance" and
moral condemnations of marijuana have a hollow ring. According to Michael D.
Newcomb, a substance-abuse expert at the University of Southern California,
"Tobacco and alcohol are the most widely used, abused, and deadly drugs
ingested by teenagers." Eighth-graders in America today drink alcohol three
times as often as they use marijuana. Drug-education programs should respect
the intelligence of young people by promoting drug-free lives without scare
tactics, lies, and hypocrisy. And drug abuse should be treated like alcoholism
or nicotine addiction. These are health problems suffered by Americans of every
race, creed, and political affiliation, not grounds for imprisonment or the
denial of property rights.
At the Alabama penitentiary where Douglas Lamar Gray is imprisoned, perhaps
half a dozen inmates are serving life without parole for marijuana offenses.
One was given a life sentence for loading his pickup truck with ditchweed, a
form of wild marijuana that is not psychoactive. Another was given a life
sentence for possessing a single joint. Hundreds of inmates may be serving life
sentences for marijuana-related offenses in prisons across the United States.
The pointless misery extends from these inmates to their families and to the
victims of every crime committed by violent offenders who might otherwise
occupy those prison cells. A society that punishes marijuana crimes more
severely than violent crimes is caught in the grip of a deep psychosis. For too
long the laws regarding marijuana have been based on racial prejudice,
irrational fears, metaphors, symbolism, and political expediency. The time has
come for a marijuana policy calmly based on the facts.
Illustrations by Scott Menchin
Copyright © 1997 by The Atlantic Monthly
Company. All
rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; April 1997; More Reefer
Madness; Volume 279, No. 4; pages 90-102.
|
IGHT years ago Douglas Lamar Gray bought a pound of marijuana in a room at
the Econo Lodge in Decatur, Alabama. He planned to keep a few ounces for
himself and sell the rest to some friends. Gray was a Vietnam veteran with an
artificial leg. As a young man, he'd been convicted of a number of petty
crimes, none serious enough to warrant a prison sentence. He had stayed out of
trouble for a good thirteen years. He now owned a business called Gray's
Roofing and Remodeling Service. He had a home, a wife, and a two-year-old son.
The man who sold him the drug, Jimmy Wilcox, was a felon just released from
prison, with more than thirty convictions on his record. Wilcox was also an
informer employed by the Morgan County Drug Task Force. The pound of marijuana
had been supplied by the local sheriff's department, as part of a sting. After
paying Wilcox $900 for the pot, which seemed like a real bargain, Douglas Lamar
Gray was arrested and charged with "trafficking in cannabis." He was tried,
convicted, fined $25,000, sentenced to life in
prison without parole, and sent
to the maximum-security penitentiary in Springville, Alabama -- an aging,
overcrowded prison filled with murderers and other violent inmates. He remains
there to this day. Under the stress of his imprisonment Gray's wife attempted
suicide with a pistol, survived the gunshot, and then filed for divorce. Jimmy
Wilcox, the informer, was paid $100 by the county for his services in the
case.
