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• Montana NORML’s Executive Director John Masterson on the series of bad news stories in medical marijuana leading to a legislator backlash

Radical Rant

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(Missoulian) Law enforcement reports of incidents involving marijuana continue to rise in the city of Missoula, and members of an oversight committee asked the county of Missoula on Wednesday to help reverse the trend.

A report released this week analyzing data for the last half of 2008 concluded the recommendation of voters in November 2006 that adult marijuana offenses be given the lowest priority by government officials “continues to be ignored by most of the officials in position to heed it.”

Donna Hamilton of the county-appointed Marijuana Initiative Oversight Committee presented the third semiannual report to commissioners at their weekly public meeting. It stated that while there have been modest decreases in incidents reported by the county sheriff’s department and the University of Montana, incidents reported by the Missoula Police Department seem to have risen by 50 percent since the first year.

John Masterson, chairman of the oversight committee [and head of Montana NORML], said many of the questions arising from the increase can’t be adequately answered, because the panel isn’t receiving initial incident reports from law enforcement agencies.

“We were told incident reports were impossible for us to review because they contained information about persons who were not yet charged with a crime,” he said.

Angela Goodhope, the third member of the oversight panel to testify in front of the commissioners, asked that they help law officers get on board with the initiative’s intent.

“We’re coming to you to ask for your help,” she told commissioners Bill Carey, Jean Curtiss and Michele Landquist. “Whether it’s overzealous law enforcement practice due to us voters maybe asking them to change their priorities, or whether it’s that people are flagrantly using marijuana because of (the initiative), we need to know this information.”

Remember when we complained that police shouldn’t arrest pot smokers and the cops would say, “We don’t make the laws, we just enforce them”?  So we get together and put up an initiative and the voters agree that while the law still exists, the police shouldn’t enforce them if they have anything more important to do.  So what’s the excuse now, “We just enforce the laws, even if you don’t want us to”?

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2009-03-11

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-03-11.mp3)

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Cannabis Conversation

• John Masterson from Montana NORML on decrim bill hearing

Hey, Stashers, I’m trying out a new format for the Stash blog post.  What do you think?

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-12-11

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2008-12-11.mp3)

On today’s Stash we go to Big Sky Country to speak with the head of Montana NORML, John Masterson, who is also co-author of a report showing that city officials in Missoula are ignoring the will of the voters who said they wanted marijuana offenses to be the lowest priority in the county.  Then we visit with Tere Joyce down in Hollywood with some 420 Comedy and comedian Howard Dover.

Missoula Marijuana Arrests Up, Report Suggests | Missoula | New West Missoula
A report released Wednesday suggests a jump in marijuana offenses in Missoula County compared to last year, despite the passage in 2006 of Initiative 2, the “marijuana initiative,” which made adult misdemeanor marijuana offenses the County’s lowest law enforcement priority.

Marijuana incidents in the City of Missoula, the County and on the University of Montana campus are up 27 percent, the report estimates; 63 percent in the city alone.

The numbers are stark enough for the Community Oversight Committee that compiled the report (PDF) to conclude: “The voters’ recommendation is apparently being ignored by most of the officials in a position to heed it.”

John Masterson, chair of the committee and director of Montana NORML, says it should be disappointing to the 55 percent of voters in Missoula County and the 80 percent of voters in some city precincts that voted for the initiative.

But no matter the vote margin, Missoula Chief of Police Mark Muir says nothing’s being ignored—it’s a county, not city, initiative. “The initiative itself never gave any direction to municipal government. Period.”

But peruse through the cases and you’ll see police officers are looking awfully hard for marijuana, Masterson says. He cites one case where pot residue was lifted from a vehicle console with white tape, and another in which a man was busted with less than a hundredth of a gram.

I get into a lot of discussions with law enforcement types regarding marijuana.  My eldest female cousin and her husband are both county sheriff’s deputies in the conservative Idaho county where I was born.  They believe the laws requiring them to investigate and arrest cannabis smokers are a ridiculous waste of their time.  They’d prefer to spend their time going after meth – a big problem in that area.

One of the most oft-heard justifications they and other law enforcement types give me is “We don’t make the laws; we just enforce them.”  I’ve always found this to be a cop-out (pardon the pun), because officers have a great deal of latitude in policing crime.  Officers will let people go 5-10mph over the speed limit, they typically ignore jaywalking, they’ll often “look the other way” when enforcement of an violation or misdemeanor is too much of a distraction from protecting the public safety.

When you ask a cop about the anti-cannabis laws, he might say, “We don’t make the laws, we just enforce them”, which is supposed to mean “I think this law is stupid and I wish I didn’t have to enforce it, but it’s my job to bust you”.  But when the citizens make laws that would allow the police to “look the other way”, like in Missoula County or Denver, Colorado, suddenly that pro-cannabis law isn’t in such strict need of enforcement.  Apparently they don’t make the laws, but they do pick and choose which ones they want to enforce.

Furthermore, when citizens make laws that remove the mandate to arrest cannabis consumers, like this year in Massachusetts or Michigan, we see law enforcement actively campaigning against such pro-cannabis laws.  Apparently they don’t make the laws, but they do lobby against the laws they don’t want to enforce.