New cash crop?: Advocate for marijuana law reform was among speakers at daylong symposium

By Steve Thorpe Legal News If you believe that marijuana use is just an insignificant weed in the garden of important issues, consider this: Marijuana may now be the biggest cash crop in the United States, perhaps eclipsing King Corn. A recent study that made that claim is controversial and the mostly illegal trade in the substance is tough to track with real numbers, but few would dispute that marijuana cultivation and sale is an enormous business in the U.S. Karen O'Keefe is director of State Policies of the Marijuana Policy Project. The MPP lobbies for reform of marijuana laws and created a "model bill" that influenced legislatures in Delaware, Vermont, Maryland, Arizona, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Michigan as they crafted their reform bills. O'Keefe was one of the speakers at the all-day symposium "National and State Marijuana Reform: The Social, Economic, Health and Legal Implications" hosted on Friday, Jan. 27, at the Wayne State University Law School by the Wayne Law Review. The symposium addressed the issues created by current marijuana laws and their enforcement and the future of marijuana law at both the state and federal level. The event featured speakers like O'Keefe, who clearly supported relaxing marijuana laws, and keynote speaker former attorney general Mike Cox, who voiced his belief that regulation should remain stringent while allowing medical dispensaries to operate. Originally, O'Keefe said, marijuana was viewed as a benign aid to health and was readily provided to patients for a number of ailments. "Only a century ago, marijuana was not illegal in any state or at the federal level. It was sold at pharmacies and prescribed by physicians," she said. "States began to ban marijuana around 1910, around the same time some states were banning alcohol sales. In the '20s, there began to appear lurid claims linking marijuana to crimes and violence. When the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed, over the objections of the American Medical Association, it wasn't an outright ban but imposed high taxes on the drug." O'Keefe said that, over the decades, the government has sponsored numerous studies intended to demonstrate the physical and psychological dangers of marijuana, but that the studies repeatedly failed to find the desired result. "The studies found that marijuana actually inhibits aggressive impulses," she said, "and they were unable to find evidence of anyone ever dying of an overdose, unlike alcohol. Researchers administered huge doses of marijuana to lab animals and were unable to kill any with an overdose." Despite a dramatic relaxation of penalties for marijuana in more than a dozen states, especially for medical use, the U.S. government remains unswayed. "The federal government says marijuana has no medical value whatsoever," said O'Keefe. "Included in the most restrictive of 'schedules,' it sits alongside heroin and PCP as a Schedule One drug." Even before the "War on Drugs," was officially announced by President Richard Nixon in 1971, penalties for drug offenses had become increasingly harsh. "Right here in Michigan," said O'Keefe, "activist John Sinclair was sentenced (in 1969) to 10 years in prison for selling two joints to an undercover cop." "Arrest rates have skyrocketed. There are more than 800,000 marijuana arrests annually now," she said. So have stronger enforcement and tougher sentences reduced use? O'Keefe argued they have not. "When the 'War on Drugs' began, 11 percent of Americans said they had used marijuana, now the figure is 34 percent," said O'Keefe. Support for marijuana law reform has also surged, she said. "Polls have shown between 60 and 80 percent support for medical marijuana nationwide, so there's no question that states are going to continue enacting these laws," she said. "There could be a majority of states with medical marijuana laws by 2014." O'Keefe speculated on what might be next for marijuana laws in Michigan. "In Michigan there are a number of very bad bills proposed that would destroy the law that voters enacted, but they would need a three quarters supermajority to pass," she said. "But there is also an important ballot initiative that just began." There are four states with petition drives going on. The Michigan effort, called Committee for a Safer Michigan, aims to put the issue of legalization to voters this November. It must get 300,000 valid signatures by July to get the question on the ballot. Published: Fri, Feb 10, 2012

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