June
10, 2003, 3:00 p.m.
Reefer Madness
Our
current Prohibition.
he
experience of Ed Rosenthal of Oakland, California, accelerates the day
when heavy dilemmas in our legal system might just force a fresh look
at our marijuana laws. Presumably that will have to happen when state
legislators, congressmen, and presidents are in recess, because the great
enemy of sensible reform has been, of course, politicians high from righteousness.
What happened to
Rosenthal was that he was convicted of marijuana cultivation and conspiracy,
facing a conceivable sentence of l00 years in prison and a fine of $4.5
million. The defense attorney had been forbidden by presiding Federal
District Judge Charles Breyer to advise the jury of the perspectives of
the defense. The city of Oakland, instructed by a statewide proposition
in 1996, had enacted an ordinance authorizing the growth of marijuana
for medical use. The judge took the flat position that local laws do not
override federal laws; therefore the verdict could not be influenced by
the legal contradiction, and therefore the jurors shouldn't be sidetracked
by hearing about it. The reasoning was identical to that of Judge George
King in the case of computer guru and poet Peter McWilliams. Judge King
did not permit McWilliams to base his defense on the California initiative.
McWilliams died from AIDS, while awaiting sentencing, unrelieved by the
marijuana that critically lessened his nausea.
Sentencing day for
Rosenthal was at hand on June 5, and there was some commotion when the
thought was expressed that the guilty finding could mean life in prison.
One juror had told the press that if she had known such might be the consequence
of a guilty finding, she, and presumably other jurors, would not have
voted as they did. The day came, and Judge Breyer, perhaps with a wink
of the eye, sentenced Rosenthal to one day in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Now Ed Rosenthal
is not to be confused with a stray felon who took a toke at an outdoor
movie with his date. Oh no. Rosenthal is a full-time practitioner of resistance
to marijuana legislation. He has written several books, totaling in sales
over 1 million. In one of his most recent, The
Closet Cultivator, he outlined how to build an indoor-marijuana-growing
system impossible to detect through any method other than betrayal. When
arrested, he was linked to a nearby warehouse full of the drug, ostensibly
consigned for medical use. Rosenthal had been teasing the law along about
as provocatively as one can do. He had a monthly radio show, and a little
while before his arrest his guest was San Francisco's district attorney,
Terence Hallinan, who praised efforts by medical-marijuana cooperatives
and permitted himself the obiter dictum on existing laws that "the
government anti-drug policy is a big lie that's supported by a thousand
other lies."
Eric Schlosser of
The Atlantic Monthly has published a deeply informative and readable
book called Reefer
Madness. He wonderfully illustrates the complexity, contradiction,
and futility of extant drug laws. Although Governor Clinton of Arkansas
introduced legislation to lessen state penalties for marijuana, he went
on, as president, to treat marijuana as if it were as innocent as adultery.
He doubled the arrests for marijuana infractions. When Nixon declared
his tough-drug policies, athwart the recommendation of his own commission
which had advocated licensing marijuana for individual home consumption,
arrests climbed to over 100,000 per year. In 2001, 720,000 Americans were
arrested for pot. About 20,000 inmates in the federal system have been
incarcerated primarily for a marijuana offense. Those in state systems
would equal that figure, and exceed it.
The problem is more
than the laws' contradictions. The Uniform Sentencing Act has given prosecutors,
not judges, almost plenary powers over defendants, power ruthlessly used
to extract information and to encourage duplicity and to make property
rights insecure. Judicial process is convoluted to the point where a judge
can reasonably exercise a choice between 100 years in prison and one day
in prison.
The marijuana laws
can most directly be compared to the Prohibition-era laws, which didn't
work, undermined the law, and were capriciously enforced. Pot consumption
varies, but not in correlation with the laws' throw-weight. If you buy
an ounce in New York State, that could bring you a fine of $l00; in Louisiana,
a jail sentence of 20 years. Ed Rosenthal is quoted by author Schlosser.
Will the laws in America dissipate, as they have done in Europe? He doesn't
think so. "They've made the laws so brittle, one day they're going
to break." The whole edifice of prohibition would come down, he predicted,
"like the fall of the Berlin Wall." Schlosser nicely summarized
Rosenthal's prediction. "A group of powerful, white, middle-aged
men will meet in a room to discuss what to do about marijuana. And they
will reach the only logical conclusion: tax it."
Like booze, some
will then go on to abuse it, though with consequences less dire.
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he
experience of Ed Rosenthal of Oakland, California, accelerates the day
when heavy dilemmas in our legal system might just force a fresh look
at our marijuana laws. Presumably that will have to happen when state
legislators, congressmen, and presidents are in recess, because the great
enemy of sensible reform has been, of course, politicians high from righteousness.
