Posted on 08/15/2006 5:24:59 PM PDT by Coleus
Voters have been losing their taste for the war on drugs lately; in the past few years, states from Arizona and Alaska to California and Hawaii have moved toward making marijuana, in particular, a low priority for law enforcement, with first-offense possession cases often dismissed with small-time fines and medical-marijuana measures on the books in several states. But the initiative voters in Nevada will be considering this fall goes much further: The “tax and regulate” measure, whose supporters got it on the ballot by collecting 86,000 signatures, would allow anyone over 21 to possess up to one ounce for personal use, would set up a system of pot shops (at a specified distance from schools), and would tax marijuana in a manner comparable to alcohol.
What’s intriguing about the measure is not just that it could turn Reno and Vegas into American Amsterdams, but that its most enthusiastic champions are folks like Chuck Muth. A burly, crew-cut, 47-year-old meat-and-potatoes man—during dinner at the Glen Eagles restaurant, to which he has driven in a beat-up, 15-year-old station wagon, he opts out of the salad and never touches the vegetables that come with the steak—Muth runs a conservative networking organization named Citizen Outreach. Inspired by a course designed in Newt Gingrich’s office that he took in Washington, D.C., in 1996, he also leads message-honing seminars that have trained many successful Republican politicians and public figures including the state’s current first lady, Dema Guinn; his electronic newsletter claims 15,000 daily readers nationwide.
Nevada went for Bush in 2000 and 2004, but not by much. It is a land of desert and mountains, conservative in an old-fashioned, western sense. And that, says Muth, who grew up in Baltimore and was arrested for pot possession in a city park late one night when he was 19 years old, makes it the perfect state to say no to the war on drugs. “Live and let live,” says Muth. “If I’m not bothering anyone else, don’t bother me.” The politician he most idealizes is Barry Goldwater, another Republican who took on his party’s sacred cows.
What if Nevada were to pass the measure and the feds swept in? “Bring it on,” Muth exclaims, so excited his large fist literally thumps the table. “This country has needed a big fight over federalism for a long time. I’d love to see it here. If the feds came in, you’d start to see a backlash against the drug war and the federal government. The war on drugs is a total failure. It’s time to bring the troops home.”
It’s a hallmark of how much has changed from a decade ago, when Democrats and Republicans were clamoring for ever more tough-on-drugs measures, that the war on drugs will likely be undone (if it ever is) in the red states, by conservatives like Muth, his friend Grover Norquist (the conservative guru at Americans for Tax Reform), writer William F. Buckley, Jr., economist Milton Friedman, and former Secretary of State George Shultz, all of whom have a sort of Nixon-going-to-China advantage in turning soft on pot. Across the nation, says Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, about a quarter of Republicans support marijuana legalization, and the numbers are creeping up. “The next generation of Republicans is much more libertarian than social conservative,” says Piper. “At its core, conservatism is supposed to be about free markets, the rule of law, and smaller government—and you can’t have any of those when you have a massive war on drugs.” At last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Drug Policy Alliance director Ethan Nadelmann got enthusiastic applause when he called on Republicans to move away from the lock-’em-up approach as a drug-prevention strategy.
For Nevada, this is not the first attempt to pass a legalization measure. Four years ago, advocates got an initiative on the ballot that would have permitted possession of up to three ounces of marijuana; the initiative gained the support of the Nevada Conference of Police and Sheriffs. “We’re saying we should be spending our time protecting and serving the public,” asserted the organization’s then-president, Andy Anderson, before pressure from members forced the conference’s leadership to abandon its support. On Election Day, the initiative polled 39 percent.
This time around, despite early polls showing 56 percent of voters opposing the measure, supporters are hoping that they’ll do better come Election Day. Across the state, says Neal Levine, who leads the campaign for the measure, more and more conservatives are getting interested in reform for pragmatic as well as philosophical reasons; attempting to stamp out marijuana usage through incarceration, argues Levine, “is the biggest, costliest policy of failure this side of Iraq.” The D.C.-based Sentencing Project estimates that it costs America more than $4 billion annually to arrest, prosecute, and lock up marijuana offenders.
Levine, who lives in Las Vegas, maintains ties to many activists inside the Republican Party. The campaign’s press officer is a Log Cabin Republican. The measure’s most fervent backers, besides Muth, include Earlene Forsythe, a former military nurse who now specializes in caring for cancer patients. Forsythe, 56, chaired the state GOP during the 2004 presidential election season and has framed photos of herself with Laura and George Bush on her office walls. But she’s lost patience with her party over the issue of medical marijuana. “If my patient wants to go out and smoke a joint,” she shrugs, “I say, ‘Why not?’”
Besides, argues Muth, what better state than Nevada to launch a drug-reform movement? “It’s got to start somewhere,” he says. “The first domino has to fall.”
Sophistry persists.
Amusing grammar. Must be recreational cocktail time at Guy's pulpit. -- The WOD's somehow equals liberty?
At the time of the Constitution we has slavery and (gasp) we ended it as well.
Yep, -- just as we should end the 'war', - gasp.
You are not going to get much sympathy for drugs and in no way would people raise it to the level of a liberty....
No one hear wants "sympathy" for drugs. We want to be free of unconstitutional prohibitory 'wars' on our liberties.
People being free of overseas and home grown drug dealers, addicts and abusers to enjoy their lives is much closer to being free for far more people, yes!
Are you lecturing to us about 'abuse' Guy, -- when you can't even compose rational sentences?
Amen.
I think you are wrong.
The twenty-first amendment reversed the idiocy of alcohol prohibition. This came about because the lawlessness and corruption finally became so overwhelming that there was little to do but surrender to the fact that people will behave in an immoral fashion and there are limits to what a free people can do about it.
Hurricane Katrina demonstrated pretty clearly what happens when what few constraints there are on lawlessness disappear. The New Orleans Police were looting the stores.
Think of all the inner city areas that YOU would not enter because you KNOW that the gangsters rule there and that you would be easy pickings for the criminals. As long as the War on Some Drugs continues, these areas will continue to expand and their impact during emergencies will be even greater.
Another article just posted relates an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision to uphold the confiscation of more than 100 thousand dollars in cash with no evidence of drug involvement whatever. Soon that number will drop to 50 thousand, 10 thousand, and who knows how low the amount will go.
When I was in the military we were forced to account for any amount over $200. The future of the War on Some Drugs looks pretty bleak to me. Please convince me that we are making any progress and just what the country will be like when this War is "won". I hope that you don't have to destroy the village to save it.
tee hee. No kidding. Oh well, I guess that would be one way to make the gov. sit up and hear the proposal.
What do you mean. I am intrigued. Do you mean by the length of time someone would receive or something else.
Thats a Fact. But it would be fun to see what they would come up with. But if they were smart, those funds could go into rehabs for people at greatest risk from addiction.
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