Double standard persists on marijuana

At a recent backyard barbecue in Miami's Upper Eastside, a group of middle-age, middle-class folks tamely sipped berry cocktails and beers. Among them: a couple of lawyers, a couple of city administrators and an arts administrator. Somewhere between the skirt steak and the apple pie, somebody lit a joint and passed it around.

Nobody blinked. Even in mainstream, white-collar settings, smoking marijuana can be commonplace and unremarkable, like having a little wine with dinner.

Once a stamp of the arty, the marginal and the counterculture, today marijuana's popularity cuts across social boundaries. Yet several high-profile marijuana arrests have recently made headlines, highlighting the hazy double standard that exists around an illegal, potentially harmful drug that continues to encroach into the mainstream:

• In March, Lawrence Korda, 59, a Broward Circuit Court judge, was charged with openly smoking marijuana in a park in Hollywood. Korda completed a drug and alcohol program to erase the misdemeanor charge, and must take monthly random drug tests for six months and perform 25 hours of community service.

• Last month, Utpal Dighe, 31, a prosecutor in the Miami-Dade state attorney's office, was fired after police charged him with buying marijuana from a street dealer in Coconut Grove.

• Also last month, Ricky Williams, 30, erstwhile superstar running back for the Dolphins, probably ended his Miami career by testing positive for marijuana for the fifth time.

For good or ill, people from all walks smoke weed. In fact, 40.1 percent of all Americans 12 years old and up admit having tried marijuana at least once -- and 6 percent acknowledge having used it in the past month, federal drug surveys show. The FBI says 786,500 people were arrested for it in 2005, the latest figures available.

One group at least modestly turning away from marijuana is middle- and high-schoolers, ages 12 to 17. The percentage who have used pot at least once dropped from more than 20 percent in 2000 to about 17 percent in 2005, federal researchers say.

''I don't know if more people are smoking or more people are admitting it,'' said Betsy Wise, a Miami stand-up comic. Wise recently started to freelance for a New York ad agency. She confided in a co-worker that a friend was delivering pot brownies to the office -- and told him to help himself.

''When I got to the agency, all but a few of the brownies were gone,'' Wise said. ``Pretty much everyone partook, right in the office. They all greeted me with smiles. I thought that was remarkable. I would have expected maybe one or two people would have been simpatico.''

More and more, weed is cropping up in the popular culture. It isn't just the domain of hip-hop records with parental-guidance labels. On cable-TV shows like Six Feet Under,The Sopranos,Entourage and The L Word, characters have sparked up casually, the way they might sip merlot, without their marijuana use being part of any plot development or morality tale.

And it isn't just cable. On ABC's Brothers & Sisters, Sally Field's character gets high. The kids on That '70s Show often emerged from clouds of funny smoke.

''I think there is more of a laissez-faire attitude these days about smoking pot,'' said Jenji Kohan, creator of Showtime's Weeds, about a mother who sells marijuana to make ends meet after her husband dies unexpectedly. 'One of the things that I find interesting is that there are boutique farms that are really into their strains. It reminds me of when wine started to become really popular and people started talking about this vine and that grape. Marijuana has become more upscale. In L.A., dealers have full menus of `unique teas.' ''

For $20 on the street, a buyer can score one-eighth ounce of low-grade marijuana from Mexico, Belize or Jamaica -- enough for four or five cigarettes. For $800, the connoisseur can acquire an ounce of exotic, extra-potent marijuana grown from modern hybrids in hydroponic labs or special soil indoors in ''grow-houses'' from Pompano Beach to Coral Gables, said James Hall, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Substance Abuse at Nova Southeastern University.

''It's like wine; you can buy an expensive one or you can buy the jug stuff,'' Hall said.

The truth is, for all of the marijuana possession arrests, police often look the other way, or let smokers go with friendly warnings.

At a Snoop Dogg concert at a Fort Lauderdale club a while back, a uniformed officer stood by unflinchingly as Snoop, and dozens in the audience, sent up telltale clouds.

''It's selective enforcement,'' said Miami musician Todd Thompson, who doesn't have a problem admitting that he gets high. ``At Langerado [a Broward outdoor music festival], there was smoking going on everywhere. I wouldn't do it in front of a cop, just in case. But cops don't always do something about a little marijuana smoke.''

Marijuana laws are a mishmash among the 50 states. It isn't entirely legal anywhere, but 12 states have at least partly decriminalized it, to the point that in Alaska there is no penalty for possessing an ounce or less at home.

In Florida, possession of 20 grams or less -- 28 grams would be an ounce -- is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail and/or a $1,000 fine; having more than 20 grams is a felony worth five years and/or a $5,000 fine.

Over the decades, debate about whether marijuana should be legalized has remained lively.

Said Howard Finkelstein, Broward County public defender and legal guru of the ''Help Me Howard'' segment on WSVN-Fox 7: 'We're making war on our own people. We take good fathers and lawyers and doctors and wives and make them outlaws. We're playing a stupid and harmful game of `gotcha.' ''

Some support for legalization comes from the belief that it's not dangerous to health, says Dr. J. Bryan Page, professor of anthropology and psychiatry and an expert on substance abuse in the University of Miami Department of Psychiatry.

''A student I knew claimed to be part of a group who all had grade-point averages over 3.6 who were very regular users,'' he said. 'She wanted me to study them to counter all the `Just say no' stuff.''

White House drug czar John Walters, not surprisingly, sees it differently. In April, his office released an analysis from the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project that said the level of THC -- the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana -- has more than doubled since 1983, from 4 percent to 8.5 percent.

''This new report serves as a wake-up call for parents who may still hold outdated notions about the harms of marijuana,'' his announcement said.

The increased potency is from the exotic new hybrids and sophisticated indoor growing techniques, says Nova Southeastern's Hall.

Marijuana-related emergency-room visits increased from 45,000 in 1995 to 119,000 in 2002, the most recent comparison available, federal drug officials say.

Added Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse: ``Science has shown that marijuana can produce adverse physical, mental, emotional and behavioral changes, and -- contrary to popular belief -- it can be addictive.''

Norman Kent, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and board member of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, scoffed: ``More people died last year from eating spinach than smoking pot.''

"Same study (sample size, methodology, control, etc.)?"

Yes. Even using the same researchers polling on the same day of the year. The temperature, however, was two degrees warmer, so that probably invalidates the second study according to you.

Yes. Even using the same researchers polling on the same day of the year. The temperature, however, was two degrees warmer, so that probably invalidates the second study according to you.

IOW, you either don't have a clue whether these two studies are comparable or not, or if you do, don't want to reveal that information.

"you either don't have a clue whether these two studies are comparable or not"

Well, the data for 2000 is from SAMHSA showing that the national average was 7.24% and Alaska was 8.65%.

And I have no reason to doubt the University of Alaska study showing that use was double 10 years earlier. You think they lied? That the University of Alaska had an agenda?

“...tobacco requires significantly more cultivation than marijuana.”

Go peruse some of the many marijuana growing sites on the Internet and you will see that marijuana growers are putting an awful lot of work into producing their buds. Tobacco can grow in the wild too. Most plants will. Wild marijuana is commonly referred to as “ditch weed” and there is no market for it because it isn’t any good. It appears that growing the good stuff, harvesting it at just the right time and drying and curing it just right takes a lot of effort. I suspect that most people who say that marijuana is just a weed that practically grows itself have never even tried to grow a vegetable garden before and have no idea how much time and effort, skills and knowledge and such go into producing any kind of crops.

Trust me ;)
It doesn’t take much to grow weed.
Those that buy the hydroponic grow kits and other paraphenalia only do so because they have to maximize the productivity of the limited acreage of their darkened closets ;)

If marijuana were legal, I wouldn’t need to mow my backyard and the goobermint would lose billions in revenue.

People who think growing MJ is hard are the type of people who’ve never grown it themselves.

Ah, but you found the truth. The rest of us, I guess, are too dunb. We just can't be trusted to know what's right.

I am not sure what this has to do with the fact that the government has been lying about this for the last hundred years, which is not really disputable.

So, who do you have in mind to make these decisions? Get rid of the representative republic and elect you King?

I would settle for forcing the government to tell the truth for a change. Besides, I grew up during a time when there were no no-knock searches or asset forfeiture, and they were far superior to what Americans face from their government today. Now I have to worry about some goon on steriods kicking down my door and sticking a machine gun down my throat while wearing a ski mask. Thanks a lot.

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

--Thomas Paine

"I am not sure what this has to do with the fact that the government has been lying about this for the last hundred years"

Well then, I guess I'll have to spell it out for you -- if you figured out the government has been lying, don't you think others have figured that out also? OR ARE WE TOO DUMB?

“People who think growing MJ is hard are the type of people who’ve never grown it themselves.”

You got me there. I’ve never grown it. I had plenty of friends who tried to grow it though and most failed. What little homegrown I did get from friends was usually crappy, mostly nothing but shake.

Have you ever tried to grow tobacco though? I don’t think it is particularly difficult compared to growing any other crops. Curing it just right takes skill, but then again if it was illegal people probably wouldn’t be so picky about having premium quality tobacco, anymore than they were picky about having premium quality alcohol during Prohibition. If pot was legal and a wide variety was for sale at licensed shops, consumer tastes would change and it wouldn’t be long before people wouldn’t want to settle for just any crappy poorly cured buds. In a competitive legal market taste, aroma, smoothness, etc., would be much more important. Harsh chlorophyll laden under-cured product, or harsh, stale, over-dried product wouldn’t sell if people could buy something “tastier” for a similar price.

One other quick point and I’ll stop with the multiple posts. If it is so easy to grow quality marijuana, why do these pot clubs in places like California and “coffee shops” in Holland do such big business selling really expensive bud? People with medical marijuana cards could grow their own, and law enforcement doesn’t care about a few plants in Holland. Why would so many people pay $20 a gram or whatever when they could grow their own for free? Is it because it is a pain in the butt to grow your own, or is it because they like having the variety offered at the shops, or is it because these people don’t need as much pot as they would get from growing their own so it isn’t worth the trouble, or is it some combination of all these factors?

Well then, I guess I'll have to spell it out for you -- if you figured out the government has been lying, don't you think others have figured that out also? OR ARE WE TOO DUMB?

Some have figured it out, but it often is not about being dumb, but more about being lazy or just trusting the government to be honest.

How many people question government? I do not know. The ones that should be are of course, the elected public officials. I do know that 4 Congressman (including Grassley) have asked John Walters to resign because of his dishonesty, but I do know anyone besides myself that does know that. I know several of the lies he has claimed to be true and has had to back away from, but doubt many know about that either.

Getting to the truth takes work, and many do not care.

But we have prisons full of murderers and other violent crime offenses that mixed pot with other stuff on a regular basis.
It is a gateway drug.

Better to practice conservatism, stay away from the cr@p and live a productive recreational drug free life.

I agree that a free-market marijuana would be of much higher quality (and lower cost). That’s just the result of competitive forces. However, it would still be easy to get and the end-runs around government taxation would still exist.

I agree that people in a legal market have more choices.

People have a legal outlet that’s UNTAXED, so they don’t have to grow it by themselves.

Look at the profit margins on tobacco vs the goobermint’s take.

If marijuana were taxed like alcohol and tobacco, people would grow at home, for friends, and for sale on an underground market.

It’s a pain to grow marijuana like it’s a pain to grow tomatoes.
1. People who grow tomatoes do it for recreation, because you get a far cheaper product (and usually a better product) at the store. Same with marijuana if it were legal.
2. But, it’s illegal and UNTAXED. People can’t get it legally and even if they could, it would be taxed so much that they’d still have off-market choices.

Even if marijuana were difficult to grow and the quality was poorer, it would have to be some hellacious ganja for someobody to pay 400% markups because our goobermint wants its cut.

Either way, I stand by my statements that marijuana is illegal because there are easier alternatives to the goobermint’s confiscatory tax rates.

You wanna ponder alcohol-related crimes and costs vs marijuana-related crimes and costs?

To me, that’s a no-brainer, even with the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen in my 42 years on earth.

It’s a “war” on “some” drugs.

If you made pot legal, it would be cheap because everybody can grow it, and people would smoke all the time and everybody would wander around high and causing accidents and being unproductive and boorish. :-)

If they made pot legal, I would do two things:

1) Try to make it illegal again
2) In the meantime, buy stock in Betty Crocker and Frito-Lay.

Full Disclosure: If they had really wanted to scare people away from pot, they should've released studies showing that it causes zits.

Cheers!

It was settled. In 1993, a judge overturned the 1990 initiative, stating that an initiative could not overturn the ruling of the Supreme Court.

http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?15+Alaska+L.+Rev.+315

“After considering the issue, Judge Thompson concluded that the Initiative did not impact the validity of the Ravin decision. He stated that

Ravin was founded in the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Alaska Constitution. The legislature - nor for that matter the people through the initiative - cannot “fix” what is disliked in an interpretation of that document by legislation. The only way to “fix” the constitution is by the amendment process or a new convention. The initiative was inadequate to overrule Ravin and that case remains the law.”

The state did not appeal that verdit at the time, and in essenece, reverted back to the laws before 1990.

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