Pot's Shot

The debate over decriminalizing marijuana in November

By Naoko Yoshida

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Jack A. Cole joined the narcotics bureau of the New Jersey State Police in 1970, a year before President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. He worked undercover, living on the streets with drug addicts and dealers, arresting everyone from small-time users to international drug trafficking organizations. But 12 years of undercover life changed his perspective. He began to sympathize with the very individuals he was policing, who he'd labeled "scum." "They are people just like you and I," he says. "The only difference between them and me is they want to put something in their body I don't wanna put into mine."

On November 4th, Massachusetts voters may get to decide whether to decriminalize the possession of small quantities of marijuana. The ballot question would be binding, meaning that if the majority of voters approve, it will pass into law. The Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy (CSMP), which campaigned to place the question on the ballot, filed over 20,000 raw petition signatures with local registrars on June 18th. If the secretary of state's office can verify 11,099 signatures, the question will have cleared the last hurdle to be placed on the ballot. Last fall, CSMP collected more than 80,000 valid petition signatures, approximately 15,000 more than needed, to place the petition before the General Court.

"In the first signature drive, which happened last fall, we got signatures from all 351 towns in Massachusetts," says Whitney Taylor, treasurer and chairwoman of CSMP. "That really shows that there's widely spread support for this initiative. It's supported by folks all over the Commonwealth with all different types of backgrounds."

Under current Massachusetts law, people arrested for marijuana possession can face up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $500. Even if someone is not convicted of a crime, the arrest would give that person a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI), a Massachusetts criminal record that is available to potential employers, housing agencies and loan providers. For first-time offenders, the standard sentence is probation, and upon successful completion of that probationary period, the offender's record is sealed.

The ballot initiative, if passed, will create a civil penalty system with a $100 fine for personal possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. No offenses would be recorded in the CORI system.

According to Uniform Crime Reports, the FBI's statistics filings, an average of about 7,500 people are arrested annually for marijuana possession in Massachusetts.

Steve Epstein, of MassCann, the state's chapter of NORML, stresses that while his organization has endorsed the ballot question, there's still a difference between decriminalization and legalization. "CSMP perceive it as something that's not being properly prohibited. That's not [MassCann's] goal. We see it as something that should be legal and appropriately taxed and regulated," he says. "We as an organization celebrate the plant. It's a remarkable, there are very few male and female annuals that do what it does. And its intoxicating effects ... 'intoxicating' is not the right word, and wasted isn't the right word for it, either."

Cole says the current law hurts a lot of people. "If we catch people smoking a joint in a bedroom, the very first thing we do is take their drivers' licenses away in most states in the United States," he explains. "If they have government-subsidized housing, they can no longer stay there." In 2002, the US Supreme Court heard a housing eviction case from California and ruled that entire families will be evicted from public assisted housing for illegal drug activity by any household member or guests. "A conviction for marijuana arrest is enough to cause a young person to lose any grants or loans from the government," Cole continues. If this initiative passes, "7,500 people can walk away just by paying $100 fine," he says.

Cole thinks the current penalty is too harsh for a relatively harmless crime. "They are not hurting someone else," he says. "Some people will tell you that you're not even hurting yourself when you talk about socialized drugs."

The first report that assured the public the abuse of marijuana was less harmful than drinking good Scotch whiskey came out in 1894 and was sponsored by the British government, says Dr. Lester Grinspoon, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Grinspoon has been studying marijuana since 1964, and his book, Marijuana Reconsidered, asserted the harmlessness of marijuana in 1971. Tobacco kills 435,000 people and alcohol kills approximately 85,000 people in the US every year, Grinspoon points out, stressing that marijuana is not fatal. "The fact that marijuana is illegal and things like alcohol and tobacco are legal ... that gives young people a strange idea of the law," he says. "Young people, from their own experience, know that marijuana is not harmful the way alcohol and tobacco are."

Not everyone agrees. Maria Di Liegro, executive director of Narconon New England, a Scientologist-run nonprofit drug rehabilitation program, says that marijuana is a "gateway drug." "Most people who've done drugs usually started with alcohol and marijuana and went on to other drugs," she says. Narconon specializes in drug education and prevention, giving presentations at schools. "The initiative is going to send a message that marijuana is safe. Many children already think that it's safe, and this is really going to enforce that idea," she says. "But regardless of what the policy is, there will be people who abuse marijuana."

Dr. Grinspoon is skeptical about marijuana's addictiveness and the "gateway drug" hypothesis. "I've seen many patients who have misused drugs ... but I've never come across a patient who couldn't stop using marijuana if he really wanted to." He also claims that there is no causal relationship between the use of marijuana and the other drugs. "Absolute nonsense," he says.

Cole, who is now the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), says current drug policy creates racial disparities. "As far as we're concerned, this is the most dysfunctional and racist policy to come along since slavery," he says.

The latest federal data (from the FBI's 2003 statistics) shows that blacks constitute 33 percent of drug arrests, though they only make up 12.8 percent of the population. A Human Rights Watch report released last month found that blacks comprised 53.5 percent of all drug-related imprisonments. Marijuana possession charges make up 40 percent of all drug arrests.

Drug prosecution also drains dollars from both state and federal budgets. Jeffrey Miron, senior lecturer of economics and director of undergraduate studies in the economics department at Harvard University, found in a 2002 study that marijuana decriminalization in Massachusetts would reduce law enforcement costs by approximately $24.3 million.

"The government spends a lot of money on this policy that affects a lot of people. In my judgment, it's a misguided policy. It does a lot more harm than does good," said Miron. "In my opinion, legalizing would be better public policy than prohibiting it," he says. "It's not a huge amount of money compared to the Massachusetts budget, but still, if it's not accomplishing something useful then still it's a waste of money," he continues. In his report, he also examined evidence from other states and countries that have already decriminalized offenses of marijuana possession and concluded that "there is no indication that decriminalization leads to a measurable increase in marijuana use."

Epstein adds that in addition to the money saved, towns would make money from the fines for possession. "Municipalities would benefit from this. They wouldn't have to ask for overrides every couple of years," he says. "To the extent that there is an opportunity cost lost due to time expended, they could make that money back with citations."

Cole argues that the current drug policy takes up police officers' time to protect people from other crimes. "First of all, you've got the amount of time that the police officers spend looking for those arrests," he says. When officers arrest offenders, they have to transport them to stations, fingerprint and photograph them and transport them to city jail. And the officer needs to go to court. "Let's say the minimum amount of time, if the person doesn't contest the case, is about four hours," Cole says. That is 750 weeks' work of a police officer. Cole adds that in Massachusetts, the police solved only 23-percent of murder cases last year. "Cops are spending so much time chasing around nonviolent drug offenders, they don't have time to protect us from violent criminals," he says.

Taylor agrees, citing a grocery list of reasons to endorse the ballot question. "You have people that care about things fiscally, and the initiative is going to save money. You have people that care about whether or not young people could go to college, they support it. You have people that believe in civil liberties and if somebody is not hurting anybody else, why should they have them get this criminal record?" she explains. "It's supported by conservatives, liberals, men and women. It's across the board."

The Massachusetts District Attorneys Association (MDAA) has expressed its unanimous opposition to the initiative on its website, arguing that decriminalization of marijuana will increase its use and cancel out the recent decline of marijuana use among young people (marijuana use has decreased by 33 percent among 8th graders, 25 percent among 10th graders, and 14 percent among 12th graders in the past seven years). The association also cites statistics from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that indicate that marijuana contains nearly five times more carbon monoxide and three times as much tar as regular cigarettes. The DAs also argue that that there is a direct link between marijuana use and car accidents, citing DEA data that high drivers are 10 times more likely to get into a car accident. Neither the ONDCP nor the MDAA would return the Dig's repeated requests for comment.

In 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006, approximately 64 percent of Massachusetts voters approved nonbinding public policy questions on decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Twelve other states, including New York and Maine, have decriminalized marijuana possession, making it a civil offense. Taylor says she and others will continue to educate voters to make sure they know about the question and they get out and vote on November 4th.