Norm Stamper: Progressives Push Against Drug War: Will Dems Listen?

Three out of four Americans believe the “war on drugs” is a failure and can never be won. Serious people like Sen. Jim Webb, former Mexican president Vicente Fox, Congressmen Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, Steve Cohen and others, even a growing body of right-of-center analysts and politicians have been saying it’s time to fundamentally reshape our approach to drug control.

So, why this divide between massive public opposition to current policies and the positions taken by our leaders? Fear, of course. They’re afraid of being punished for touching what has been perceived, mistakenly, as a third rail issue.

And the cause of this “drug war dementia”? I’m guessing it has something to do with a brilliant 2004 poll on the topic of medical marijuana. The poll asked two questions, the first confirming what had already been shown over and over again: that about 70 percent of people support the idea of legalizing marijuana, at least for medical purposes.

But then, pollsters asked something interesting:

“Regardless of your own opinion, do you think the majority of people support making marijuana medically available, or do you think the majority opposes making marijuana medically available?”

The result? In Rhode Island, where the poll was conducted, only 26.5 percent thought that most people support medical marijuana.

The lesson here? While many of our elected representatives privately support serious changes to our failed drug laws, they believe they are alone. They think if they stick their necks out they’ll be handed their heads come election time.

Which is why we must rise up and let our elected officials know they are safe to support drug law reform. And in considerable political danger if they do not.

via Norm Stamper: Progressives Push Against Drug War: Will Dems Listen?.

This is also why we must come out of the cannabis closet and make ourselves known as the responsible, taxpaying, normal-with-an-a, law-abiding-(except-that-law) citizens that we are.  When the only public image of the cannabis community is the “stoner”, the people who support our issue will only do so quietly, lest they be lumped in with the “burnouts”.

Never has this point been so crystal clear to me as during this last weekend’s family campout for Independence Day.This was a campout for my wife’s immediate family, which sounds like a cozy get-together until you realize she is the fifth of fifteen kids.  When all the brothers and sisters plus their spouses and children gather, it’s an event with about sixty people.  Most of the younger brothers and sisters are former marijuana smokers, but they’ll tell you they “outgrew that” or “had to become a mom/dad”.  Yet four of them were eager to stop by our tent for a puff of Oregon’s finest.

That’s right – tent.  It was such a 180° from last weekend’s Mountain High Camping Weekend, where I gathered with an all-male group of cannabis activists and medical marijuana patients.  Pipes, bongs, joints, and vaporizer bags were plentiful and marijuana buds and hash were openly shared by all.  But at this weekends’ family festivities, my tent had to be set up in the furthest corner and all my tokes had to be surreptitiously sneaked behind zippered doors.

One cousin, three years older than me, came in and offered to light us up with what he had brought from Idaho.  It was that sad golf-divot-looking, alfalfa-smelling pressed brick Mexican schwag that I’d last seen six years ago before moving to Portland.  “Put that away,” I chided, “because not only will that not have the slightest effect on me, but I also won’t smoke anything that’s killing innocent Mexicans.”  He explained that chunk of hemp pressboard was all they could get in Idaho; I explained how 7,000 Mexicans are murdered per year as cartels smuggle that crap to the states.  We then lit up the fine crystally Oregon bud.  He was just one hit in when his eyes sparkled.  That was all he needed, he said, and it showed.

This cousin then explained to me how he used to smoke cannabis regularly, but now he had become a father and had to “play grown-up” and couldn’t do that anymore.  I had taken a vow of neutrality for my wife that I would shelve my political persona for the weekend (just “Russ”, not “Radical Russ”) – so I didn’t tell him about all the incredible parents I know who are regular cannabis smokers.

Later that weekend, this cousin got very drunk and slept away most of the next day with a splitting hangover… while his child was taken care of by the rest of the adults.  So much for “playing grown-up”.

Which leads me to the booze.  I will not make the obvious joke about my wife’s family’s Irish heritage and the bottle – this scene could’ve played out in any American family of any heritage.  But all weekend, every day, cooler after cooler of beer was filled and emptied.  At the center camping table where toddlers sat to eat and play were bags of chips, cookies, candies, and one-third of the table covered with bottles of gin, rum, vodka, tequila, whiskey, and liqueurs.  One female cousin got particularly “well served” and babbled and laughed to the point where my eleven-year-old niece is teasing her for being “a drunk”.

I don’t mean to paint this picture to show my wife’s family as reckless or irresponsible.  Those kids are well-watched, they know that alcohol is for adults, and everyone drinking there handles their alcohol responsibly (even if that is to responsibly puke in the bushes away from camp).  Nobody drives, gets violent, or allows the kids to drink.  But as I watched this scene, I wondered just how much of a turd in the punchbowl I would’ve been if I had simply loaded a bowl in my Starfish Designs pipe and smoked it as I enjoyed the campfire.

Every one of them who were drinking, even to excess, are fine responsible parents with great kids.  It wouldn’t occur to any of them that becoming parents meant they had to stop drinking to become “responsible”.    Yet to a person every one of them offers some sort of excuse that growing up and becoming parents forced them to stop smoking cannabis.  When I dig deep enough, I find that it is their fear of legal sanctions and losing their kids that is the true reason.

And now we get back to that Rhode Island poll where almost 3 out of 4 people support medical marijuana, but only think 1 out of 4 of their neighbors do.  These in-laws of mine, they know their cannabis use doesn’t make them bad parents, but they think others would consider them bad parents if their cannabis use was known.  They don’t know what to tell their kids about cannabis if they used it; they don’t know how to tell their kids that they should always obey the law and respect police, except when it comes to mommy and daddy’s smokable plant.  With alcohol they can say, “wait til you’re older”.  With cannabis, they are so conditioned to think of it as an act of juvenile rebellion that they feel immature and irresponsible when they use it.

I think next year, after the kids go to sleep, I will have to just take out a joint and start smoking it.  Especially after the umpteenth offer of alcohol from one of my in-laws, which I refuse every time with, “No thanks, I’m only choosing safer drugs in my old age.”