Barney Frank to propose marijuana decriminalization?
posted at 9:36 am on March 23, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Can anyone take a statement on Bill Maher’s HBO show seriously? Barney Frank told Maher on Real Time that he would introduce legislation in Congress to decriminalize small amounts of pot, asserting that its illegal status is out of step with the American public. When asked, an aide had heard nothing of it until Frank’s HBO appearance:
Rep. Barney Frank will soon introduce legislation to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, the Massachusetts Democrat said during an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” …
Frank has introduced legislation in previous years to allow the use of “medical marijuana,” although the bills never made it out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Asked by Maher as to why he would push a pot decriminalization bill now, Frank said the American public has already decided that personal use of marijuana is not a problem.
Frank claimed he would call it the “Make Room for Serious Criminals” bill. The intent would be to take the burden of marijuana investigations, arrests, trials, and encarceration off of an overtaxed justice system and allow resources to go after more serious crimes. Frank called incarceration for smoking marijuana “silly” and that lawmakers had to catch up to public sensibilities on marijuana.
I’m not necessarily opposed to legalization, but even with that, Frank oversells the concept. Most people caught smoking marijuana don’t serve any jail time at all. In most places, it’s not even a serious misdemeanor, and in many jurisdictions it’s more of an infraction. Convictions for personal use usually result in fines and sometimes in compulsory rehab, but it’s been decades since individual users have been jailed for simply smoking a joint.
The big drain on law enforcement resources come from interdicting the larger traffic in marijuana, at the border and in the interior. It doesn’t sound as though Frank will propose that marijuana becomes completely legal, and so it will do very little to “make room for serious criminals”. It also imposes a forced legalization on states and communities that the federal government has no business mandating. In fact, the only action Congress can take is to remove the federal bans on marijuana, including importation, so that states can make their own decisions on legalization.
Should Congress take that kind of action? The decades of prohibition on marijuana have done little to stem its popularity and abuse. In terms of intoxication, it has no worse effects than alcohol, and some argue considerably less impairment. A regulated marijuana industry could dry up the gang economics in its trade and ensure some safety for the users. It would also free resources to fight the distribution of far worse substances, such as heroin and cocaine. On the other hand, its status as a gateway drug could drive up other forms of abuse, and federal decriminalization could call into question the rest of the war on drugs that has thus far been a failure that has incarcerated large numbers of Americans and driven violent behavior between rival “distributors” in their markets.
We know that what we’ve been doing hasn’t worked. Is it time to acknowledge a new paradigm on marijuana? Perhaps — but what Frank proposed will have no effect at all.
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So make the case and get the laws changed. In the meantime you are enabling that “dark underbelly” by your actions. You are funding gangs and illegal activities. You are tearing at the fabric of society. If it isn’t the pot, something is making you stupid if you think that others wouldn’t find that objectionable.
highhopes on March 25, 2008 at 1:13 PM
I find it pretty stupid that others would object to my pain meds. Like I said I can get opiates easily with a scrip which are ten times more powerful and far more dangerous. And I don’t fund anybody because I can grow my own cannabis, but I shouldn’t have to worry about going to jail over my choice of medication because dumb sh!ts like you object.
Ciannaky on March 25, 2008 at 1:21 PM
You are enabling that “dark underbelly” with your stupid laws. The black market for such drugs would not otherwise exist, but for people like you.
In a marketplace that you created, subjecting otherwise innocent people like Ciannaky to the dangers of associating with such lowlifes.
‘You’ are the problem. ‘You’ are precipitating the erosioni of society. You
LimeyGeek on March 25, 2008 at 1:41 PM
As I already said, you are enabling the same “dark underbelly” as you type on that keyboard, which was made in China [along with everything else].
We’re here to debate, not throw around childish insults. That’s for the kids at Daily Kos.
budorob on March 25, 2008 at 1:48 PM
Exactly, if it were legal for me to do my odds of getting caught in a drive by while getting my meds would go from 50-50 to 0. Honestly what kind of animal would deny terminally ill or chronic pain suffers relief and put them in danger of being incarcerated for going against those that “object”. And it isn’t profitable to gangs if they can’t make any money off it.
Ciannaky on March 25, 2008 at 1:52 PM
Not to mention that the “War on Drugs” costs us over 40 billion a year and hasn’t done squat to stem the tide of drug use. Since Nixon started this little war it was cost us how many trillions of dollars to accomplish absolutely nothing.
Ciannaky on March 25, 2008 at 1:55 PM
Does marijuana cause cancer?
May 2000
http://www.webmd.com/news/20000508/marijuana-unlikely-to-cause-cancer
May 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729_pf.html
April 2007
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm
December 2007
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,318526,00.html
budorob on March 25, 2008 at 1:58 PM
This blog is giving me a headache….im gonna need to go workout, then smoke a bowl to relax…I will say this though, legal or not it is so easy to get MJ….I firmly believe that there is nothing wrong with it as long as you dont abuse it (and by abusing it im talking about taking 5 bongloads to the dome multiple times of the day)….There are worse things you could be doing…like blogging on the Daily Kos….now those people have issues!
SoCalInfidel on March 25, 2008 at 3:46 PM
oh yeah, and im a successful business owner who loves the occasional joint…. :)
SoCalInfidel on March 25, 2008 at 3:48 PM
I smoked this morning and I’ll smoke when I get home. I work 40, been at this job for 7 years. I’ve never hooked myself out for a joint. Never felt the need to jump off of a building to see if I could fly. I never got the shakes or even got moody because I didn’t have any herb.
Some of the arguments I have read here are actually kinda funny in a rediculous sort of way.
It would be nice to have it de-criminalized but either way, I’ll still smoke till the day I die. I love you Mary Jane.
I’m off to have my way with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.
Geronimo on March 25, 2008 at 4:07 PM
Speaking of Nixon, in 1972 he empowered the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse (otherwise known as the Shafer Commission) to study the issue.
Here it is:
Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/nc/ncmenu.htm
Let me quote the Final Comment:
“In this Chapter, we have carefully considered the spectrum of social and legal policy alternatives. On the basis of our findings, discussed in previous Chapters, we have concluded that society should seek to discourage use, while concentrating its attention on the prevention and treatment of heavy and very heavy use. The Commission feels that the criminalization of possession of marihuana for personal is socially self-defeating as a means of achieving this objective. We have attempted to balance individual freedom on one hand and the obligation of the state to consider the wider social good on the other. We believe our recommended scheme will permit society to exercise its control and influence in ways most useful and efficient, meanwhile reserving to the individual American his sense of privacy, his sense of individuality, and, within the context of ail interacting and interdependent society, his options to select his own life style, values, goals and opportunities.
The Commission sincerely hopes that the tone of cautious restraint sounded in this Report will be perpetuated in the debate which will follow it. For those who feel we have not proceeded far enough, we are reminded of Thomas Jefferson’s advice to George Washington that “Delay is preferable to error.” For those who argue we have gone too far, we note Roscoe Pound’s statement, “The law must be stable, but it must not stand still.”
We have carefully analyzed the interrelationship between marihuana the drug, marihuana use as a behavior, and marihuana as a social problem. Recognizing the extensive degree of misinformation about marihuana as a drug, we have tried to demythologize it. Viewing the use of marihuana in its wider social context, we have tried to desymbolize it.
Considering the range of social concerns in contemporary America, marihuana does not, in our considered judgment, rank very high. We would deemphasize marihuana as a problem.
The existing social and legal policy is out of proportion to the individual and social harm engendered by the use of the drug. To replace it, we have attempted to design a suitable social policy, which we believe is fair, cautious and attuned to the social realities of our time.”
When the report did not support Nixon’s position, he spiked it.
Salamantis on March 25, 2008 at 5:21 PM
Awesome find Salamantis, and for all you “Gateway” boneheads read this from chapter III
Ciannaky on March 25, 2008 at 5:38 PM
It is a liberal bromide that poverty, racism, family disintegration, poor education; inadequate employment, housing or health care are the root causes of whatever social problem is under discussion. In the case of drug abuse, however, the bromide captures considerable truth.
That drug abuse is more common among the impoverished, the unemployed; among the homeless and the mentally ill is not mere coincidence. Those who are wihtout the essentials of a decent life are in pain. People in pain look for relief wherever they can get it. Often the only succor they see is sold in small bags on the streets. If they succumb to the lure of drugs and then need help to control their cravings, the help is rarely there.
Even those who are fortunate enough to get into treatment programs find it almost impossible to stay in them, or to get on top of their drug dependencies. People without jobs, skills, intact families and money, or with untreated mental illness, are much less likely to succeed in treatment programs than others who are not so burdened. These are the root causes of the most intractable drug abuse in this nation.
Sociologist Elliot Currie makes the case that there are two distinct drug problems in America. One is drug abuse by the upper classes, those have jobs, money, opportunity. The other is among the poor.
The upper-class problem is self-limiting. People with much to gain from quitting or cutting down on drugs are usually able to do so, albeit with difficulty. The poor, who perceive no real alternative to drugs, are different. Their drug problems have been worsened by escalations in the drug war. If we are to have any hope of reversing the devastating effects of drug abuse among those enslaved by it, we must declare drug peace and return to our ideals of social justice.
I encourage those of you ardently against marijuana and other drug legalization to read what the dozens of American majors, judges, and policemen who have come out in support of drug legalization have to say. Don’t worry, some of them are not gay.
The most troublesome obstacle to legalization is cognitive. Legalization is counterintuitive. When presented with undesirable behavior of others, the natural reaction of human beings is to try to suppress it. Sometimes that works, but sometimes, as in drug prohibition, it has the opposite effect.
Drivers whose cars get in cornering skids have to be trained to reject their intuitions and steer into, rather than away from, the skid. Drivers whose brakes lock up and produce a braking skid have to be trained to ease up on the brake pedal rather than pressing even harder. These solutions, like drug legalization, are counterintuitive, but they work.
deesine on March 25, 2008 at 7:55 PM
I would just like to say that prohibition creates drugs that are more dangerous. Once transport becomes an issue, as it always does during prohibition, then usually people try to make the drug as concentrated as possible thus easier to transport, or if not transport ease of production as in the case of meth. Drugs will always be a market, the stresses put on that market by prohibition, create the incentives for the genesis of drugs like meth, crack, and whatever will be the next drug. Also if you go back before drug prohibition you would find that many of the drugs were taken in much more diluted doses, Freud chewed coca leaves, cocaine was an additive in coca cola, etc. where now it is in crack form terrorizing our inner cities.
Let’s go back to alcohol prohibition, not only was hard liquor preferable to beer due to transport, but it was less safe due to the black market status. People who are sold unsafe goods have no recourse under the law when prohibition criminalizes their very possession thus the bad hooch during alcohol prohibition that poisoned people just trying to have a cold one.
LevStrauss on March 25, 2008 at 9:28 PM
Here in the Southwest, gangs such as MS-13 and the Mexican Mafia fund their increasing power largely with drug money.
I don’t want to smoke it: I did when I was a kid (h.s. and college). But legalize it to defund the gangs, just as legalizing booze hurt the Mafia types.
MJ used to be legal in this country until we decided we needed a micro-managing nanny-state!
P.S. Will the only guy on this forum who thinks the War on Drugs is actually working, please stand up? (Hint: It is impossible to wage war on an inanimate object.)
sanantonian on March 25, 2008 at 11:00 PM
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