SO FAR this year, about 4000 people have died in Mexico’s drugs war – a horrifying toll. If only a good fairy could wave a magic wand and make all illegal drugs disappear, the world would be a better place.

Dream on. Recreational drug use is as old as humanity, and has not been stopped by the most draconian laws. Given that drugs are here to stay, how do we limit the harm they do?

The evidence suggests most of the problems stem not from drugs themselves, but from the fact that they are illegal. The obvious answer, then, is to make them legal.

The argument most often deployed in support of the status quo is that keeping drugs illegal curbs drug use among the law-abiding majority, thereby reducing harm overall. But a closer look reveals that this really doesn’t stand up. In the UK, as in many countries, the real clampdown on drugs started in the late 1960s, yet government statistics show that the number of heroin or cocaine addicts seen by the health service has grown ever since – from around 1000 people per year then, to 100,000 today. It is a pattern that has been repeated the world over.

A second approach to the question is to look at whether fewer people use drugs in countries with stricter drug laws. In 2008, the World Health Organization looked at 17 countries and found no such correlation. The US, despite its punitive drug policies, has one of the highest levels of drug use in the world (PLoS Medicine, vol 5, p e141).

A third strand of evidence comes from what happens when a country softens its drug laws, as Portugal did in 2001. While dealing remains illegal in Portugal, personal use of all drugs has been decriminalised. The result? Drug use has stayed roughly constant, but ill health and deaths from drug taking have fallen. “Judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalisation framework has been a resounding success,” states a recent report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington DC.

When the evidence is so completely obvious regarding the need to legalize marijuana and regulate hard drugs, it is hard to avoid invoking conspiracy theory as to why we continue to maintain prohibition.  You’d think some sectors of our economy are in such need of more arrests, more prisoners, more prisons, and more crime and mayhem that they would actively oppose changing our drug policies to protect their profits.  You’d think some sectors of our economy would be at such a competitive disadvantage against a grow-your-own medicine / food / fuel / fiber / plastics plant that most couldn’t survive if we ended prohibition.  You’d think that some sectors of our government that are unwilling or unable to help the disaffected poor need the underground economy and jobs market provided by illegal drugs.

But that would be just crazy conspiracy theory talk, right?

Trend toward legalization of marijuana in the US public opinion polls 1969-2009

I’ve been analyzing polls from the past forty years to find the trend in support of marijuana legalization.  Barring any major shift in public attitude, it looks as though we might have majority support by the 2012 presidential election.

The trendline is simply the linear result of plugging all those numbers into Excel.  We see a drop in support during the Carter and Reagan Administrations, but then a rapid increase in support in the first Bush and Clinton Administrations.  Average it all out and we go from about 15% support forty years ago to about 40% support today.  Looking to the next election, support would be at about 42%.  This puts majority support at around 2028… just in time for Chelsea Clinton to run!  (Kidding!)

However, if you throw a triple-polynomial trendline at the numbers, to account for the rise-fall-rise shape of the data points, the rapid increase builds momentum and majority support is reached by the next election in 2012.

No matter how you slice it, with my best-case prediction of majority support by 2012; worst-case by 2028, that means over the next five presidential elections, the marijuana legalization question is going to be asked more frequently, and those who oppose it will gain less support.

(Before we start: Change.gov is Barack Obama’s official transition website.  Change.org is not affiliated with Obama, but is a collection of non-profits lobbying the Obama Administration.)

The first time they asked The People what kind of change we wanted.  We overwhelmingly asked Barack Obama to legalize marijuana and made it the #1 question.  Obama answered “No” and offered no explanation.

The second time they asked The People what kind of change we wanted.  To balance the responses they created categories of requests instead of one big open poll.  We overwhelmingly asked Barack Obama to legalize marijuana, making it the #4 question overall and #1 within the National Security category (as “end the war on drugs”).  Obama didn’t even answer, but instead referred to the previous “No” and no explanation.

So now, the third time, Barack Obama’s Change.gov is opening up “the Citizen’s Briefing Book”, where once again, citizens can submit their policy ideas and vote on the ideas.  Guess which policy idea is #1 again, with “44,950 points” (whatever “points” are) as of this posting?

Ending Marijuana Prohibition
I suggest that we step back and take a non-biased “Science Based” approach to decide what should be done about the “Utter Failure” that we call the War on (some) Drugs.

The fact is that Marijuana is much less harmful to our bodies than other Legal Drugs such as Tobacco and Alcohol. And for the Government to recognize Marijuana as having Medicinal Properties AND as a Schedule I drug (Has NO medicinal Properties) is an obvious flaw in the system.

We must stop imprisoning responsible adult citizens choosing to use a drug that has been mis-labeled for over 70 years.

Click over if you like and vote.  It may get just as much notice as the first two times (none), but clicking is free and easy.  The effect of having one of the most popular issues rise again and again, only to be ignored, is building this story in the media.  We’ve got the people directly asking Obama three times to rethink the drug war, Change.org will present that same notion from The People tomorrow, and Congress had to resort to blackmail to get El Paso city leaders to shut up about it.  The ONLY person who doesn’t want to talk about this is Barack Obama, and that’s going to become a deadly meme for the “open and transparent, change we can believe in, government responsive to the people, reliant on science” aura Obama wants to build in his Administration.

(I think a few “Why Won’t You Talk About The Drug War?” signs at the Inauguration would be a beautiful site to see, don’t you?)

I just received this email:

Could you please explain to the listeners (or at least me) how the sites Change.gov and Change.org relate to one another? Are both run by Obama and Co? You have links to both on your site and I find it very confusing. Also from going to the home page of either one, I find it hard to locate the marijuana topics, although they have lots of votes and are easily found through the direct links on your site.

Which is going to make Paul Armentano giggle, because we were just talking about this very confusion.  Ready?  Here goes:

Change.GOV is the official GOVernment site of the Barack Obama Transition Team.  It is run by Barack Obama and asks citizens to submit questions to the new incoming GOVernment because Obama promised transparency in GOVernment.  We asked Barack Obama to legalize marijuana at this site, assembled the most votes of any question on the site, and were summarily dismissed.

Change.ORG is NOT affiliated with Obama’s Transition Team.  They are a nonprofit ORGanization that has assembled support from other nonprofit ORGanizations to ask the American people about their most crucial issues.  This ORGanization (in partnership with the Case Foundation) is going to present the top ten issues to Barack Obama at the National Press Club this Friday.  We’re telling Barack Obama to legalize marijuana at this site, assembling the most votes of any question on the site, and… well, regardless what Obama says, Change.ORG is pushing forward with national advocacy campaigns on behalf of the top ten ideas, so we’ll move The People without him, if necessary.

KVIA.com El Paso, Las Cruces – Weather, News, Sports – Day before re-vote, mayor’s e-mail says ‘potheads’ have had sayEL PASO, Texas — City Council is poised to re-vote Tuesday on a drug war resolution that includes the controversial request for an open and honest debate on the prohibition of drugs.

Mayor John Cook quickly vetoed the resolution after city Rep. Beto O’Rourke added that request at the last minute.

Monday, an e-mail from the mayor surfaced, urging those who are against the resolution to make sure they are heard, because “the pot heads” have sent their message.

It states: “I can tell you that all the pot heads have sent their e-mails and they are encouraging the reps to stand by their decision. But why does the silent majority remain silent? We have certainly attracted attention to our city, but I don’t think the attention is positive.”

Cook told [reporters] the e-mail was private and not meant to be forwarded to others. “Specifically, I was referring to one individual who happened to write an e-mail to me saying that he’s been smoking pot for over twenty years and he thinks we should legalize marijuana in the United States … So if calling that person a pot head is insulting to him, then I apologize.”

O’Rourke had this to say about Cook’s remarks in the e-mail: “I’m sure the mayor probably didn’t mean for everyone to read this, but I was concerned that anyone who might support having a national open discussion on our best options in the drug war would be described as a pothead.”

The vote to override Mayor Cook’s veto of the resolution on the drug war in Juarez is scheduled for Tuesday.

Mayor Cook, did you ever stop to think that the people who want to at least talk about alternatives to the prohibition of drugs are the majority and aren’t being silent?  

Or is that too difficult to handle when you haven’t even mastered the difference between the plural (”all the pot heads have sent their e-mails”) and the singular (”if calling that person a pot head is insulting to him, then I apologize.”)

It is insulting, Mayor Cook, to me and to all the people who support the El Paso Council’s unanimous vote to begin a new discussion on the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs, to call us “potheads”.  (I call myself a “pothead”, but that’s because I wear a 100% hemp cap with a pot leaf on it.  Literally: pot on head.)  It’s the kind of word we can use amongst ourselves with good friends (think “n-word”) but is automatically offensive when used by outsiders to describe us.

Won’t it be something if later today that council overrides his veto?  The city that started this stupid War on Drugs almost one hundred years ago could be the city that begins to end it.

But the politicians ain’t a-listenin’.

The latest evidence that The People¹ are way ahead of the politicians on this one comes from our friends at “the Google”.  Google Trends is a feature that allows you to map the prevalence on a search request on the internet through Google.  In human terms, it tells you what people are looking for².

When we plug in the search term “legalize marijuana”, and limit it to the United States, we get a chart that looks like this:

What we’re seeing here is 2004-2006.  This chart shows the searches relative to a baseline average, which is 1.0 on this chart.  Every year, searches for “legalize marijuana” spike in the spring (around 4/20, I’ll bet) and winter, which is usually election time.  

When the chart hits 2.0, that’s twice as many searches as average.  Around election time, it spikes to triple in 2006 and five-times the average searches in 2004 and 2005.  But when the chart dips to 0.0, searches for “legalize marijuana” are far worse than average, right around summer time. 

However, when we take a look at the last two years, something interesting has happened.  In 2007, interest in “legalize marijuana” stayed relatively constant, with a slight spike in spring and winter.  In 2008 the trend continues but shows spikes in the middle of summer – the primary season – and a huge increase in interest around this presidential election without the drop to 0.0 we saw in 2004.

As I read the explanation for the math behind this (and recognizing I’m no Danica McKellar, either), it seems that if “all numbers are relative to total traffic”, and the total traffic on the internet is rising a thousand times every five years, then if “legalize marijuana” is staying at or above the relative average of 1.0, then interest in the topic has been rising steadily since late 2006!  No 0.0’s in nine straight quarters!

Also, the steady line of this graph shows me that “legalize marijuana” is becoming more mainstream, as it is not just spiking when there’s a 4/20 or an election that might show spikes due to us dedicated activists.

This comports well with what we see from public opinion polls.  The 2007 Zogby Opinion Poll on the question of “eliminat[ing] federal penalties for the personal use of marijuana by adults and allow states to adopt their own policies on marijuana?” found that The People are evenly split on ending cannabis prohibition at 49% in favor, 48% opposed, with majorities in the east and west in favor.  Support of The People for this question, phrased one way or another, has risen steadily over twenty years.

We also find that the public support for medicinal use of marijuana is strong at between 70% and 80% in favor of ending criminal penalties on people using cannabis as medicine with a doctor’s supervision.

We’ve told you how President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team was “Open for Questions” at Change.gov.  We shared the joy of learning that after 978,868 votes on 10,302 questions from 20,468 people, the #1 question asked by The People was:

“Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?”

We also shared the contempt for The People when the transition team issued the curt eleven-word reply to a very complex and reasonable question:

“President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.”

Now in the second round of “Open for Questions” is on and in the “National Security” category, after 284,445 votes on 4,449 questions from 20,121 people, we find this question in the #1 slot:

“Our current war on drugs is failing America. Billions of dollars are spent on a losing campaign. Our prisons are overflowing with people that don’t deserve to be there. What is the government going to do in an effort to fix this major problem?”

And in the “Additional Issues” category, after 811,832 votes on 13,539 questions from 45,291 people, sitting in the #2 slot is this question (behind a question on appointing Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Bush Administration):

“The people of this country want marijuana decriminalization, when will marijuana be decriminalized? Why continue to spend billions of dollars to prohibit marijuana when evidence shows that the war on drugs is, as you said, “an utter failure”?”

Over at the other site, Change.org, not affiliated with the Obama transition team, we see a similar theme.  Their #1 issue as voted on by The People was “Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana”, which has now moved on to Round #2 of the “competition”.

Then there was that little public opinion poll called the election, where medical marijuana passed in Michigan by 63% and passed in every single county, even the ones that voted for John McCain.  We saw decriminalization of marijuana passed in Massachusetts by 65%, and in both states, the marijuana reform laws got more votes than Barack Obama did!

When will the politicians hear us?  What will it take for them to get the message that the people want new thinking in drug policy and they don’t think that marijuana use by adults is literally a federal crime?

² And when it comes to “legalize marijuana” the place looking for it the most is Orlando, Florida, followed by Denver, Portland (yay!), Tampa, and San Diego. Florida is really looking for some legal marijuana!