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Published: Los
Angeles Times, June 22, 2004
Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer
An alliance
of marijuana legalization activists in
Oakland announced Monday that they are
close to placing a measure on the November
ballot that would require police to
essentially look the other way when
dealing with marijuana possession by
adults.
The measure also
would require the city to regulate and
collect tax revenue for adult cannabis use
if the state ever allows it. The extra tax
dollars would be earmarked for police* and
other cash-strapped municipal services.
(* For the
record: The initiative does not earmark
money for police, but for such vital city
services as "schools, libraries, and youth
programs.")
Efforts to make
marijuana use the lowest law enforcement
priority mirror a similar initiative
approved by Seattle voters last fall. But
the push for marijuana taxation is the
first such effort in the nation, backers
of the Oakland measure say.
"This law will
keep cannabis off the streets, away from
children and out of the hands of dangerous
drug dealers, by making it available in
licensed businesses, not on neighborhood
street corners," said Dale Geringer,
president of the California chapter of the
National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws.
But foes say it
is a misguided effort meant to foist a
dangerous drug on an unsuspecting public.
"I'm very
concerned about the message this sends to
the rest of the nation and world," said
Richard Meyer, a Drug Enforcement
Administration spokesman in San Francisco.
"I think the marijuana lobby is trying to
deceive the people again that marijuana
use is harmless. That's far from the
truth."
Under state law,
possession of less than an ounce of
marijuana is a misdemeanor, while anyone
caught with more can face felony charges.
The possession of any amount of cannabis
is prohibited under federal law.
The initiative's
authors hope the Oakland push will serve
as a springboard for a broader effort to
legalize, regulate and tax marijuana in
California. The effort was launched by
Oakland Civil Liberties Alliance, a newly
formed coalition of local residents and
national drug policy groups -- including
NORML, the Marijuana Policy Project and
Drug Policy Alliance, which is funded in
part by New York billionaire George Soros,
who is also financing efforts to defeat
President Bush in November.
On Monday, the
coalition announced it had collected more
than 30,000 signatures to qualify the
initiative, nearly double what was needed
to place it on the ballot. A pivotal
selling point, organizers said, was the
argument that police time was being wasted
on arresting and investigating adults for
cannabis use while other city programs
were being cut, including parks and
libraries. Backers also say they are
tapping resentment over the Oakland City
Council's decision to crack down on about
a dozen medical marijuana dispensaries in
the city. One section of town earned the
nickname "Oaksterdam," a reference to the
freewheeling Dutch city of Amsterdam,
where marijuana is legal.
"When the council
reduced the number of cannabis clubs, it
really ignited people and got them out
there to get this initiative going," said
Councilwoman Desley Brooks, who supports
the November ballot measure.
Brooks said
police last week attempted undercover
purchases at several of the medical
cannabis clubs that hadn't halted their
dispensary operations, underscoring the
need to keep officers focused on more
important crimes.
"The whole
federal drug war has been a joke at best,"
she said. "People realize that doesn't
work and we need to look to some other
solutions."
Tom Riley, a
spokesman for the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy, called
marijuana's reputation as a relatively
benign recreational drug a persistent myth
perpetuated among adults who came of age
in the 1960s and '70s, when cannabis use
skyrocketed.
"It's out of
touch with the science," said Riley.
"Until those sorts of public perceptions
change, we'll keep getting misguided
policy based on outdated information."
Riley also said
that the perception of local police
exhausting their officers on low-level
drug busts "is simply not true."
More than 700,000
pot arrests are made in the U.S. during a
typical year. But most federal prisoners
incarcerated for marijuana crimes were
caught with in excess of 100 pounds of
pot, Riley said, and just 1% of the inmate
population in state prisons are behind
bars for cannabis. "Most people who go to
prison for marijuana offenses are serious
drug offenders," Riley said.
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